


Little Animal Lives

by adeepeningdig



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Child Neglect, Kid Fic, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Suicidal Ideation, child endangerment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 23:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11588205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeepeningdig/pseuds/adeepeningdig
Summary: "The house has good bones"In which Bucky Barnes emerges from cryofreeze, gets therapy, buys a house, some chickens and a few horses, and finds himself under the care of a few capable women and one capable girl; and in which Steve Rogers comes home.





	1. I. James

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> 1) I'd like to elaborate on some of the tags for this fic so people can know what to expect. There are two brief instances of suicidal ideation in this work: one in the second chapter, and the other in the third. In neither case are they acted upon in any way. There is some description of child neglect and child endangerment. No children come to harm in this fic. As will all fics about the Winter Soldier, issues regarding non-con elements are explored.
> 
> 2) Canaan, New York is a real town in Upstate New York. I have never been there. I apologize to any and all residents of Canaan for the inevitable inaccuracies. 
> 
> 3) I spent a lot of time listening to Bruce Springsteen's two excellent late albums, The Rising and Magic, while writing this fic. You should listen to them too.
> 
> 4) My everlasting love and gratitude to yodas yo-yo and devilpiglet. Both of them read this fic over numerous times. I could not have written this without their impeccable editing skills, insightful comments, and cheerleading. 
> 
> This is fic is the longest fic I have written. It took me almost a year to write. It is also, for a variety of reasons, one of the most personal fics I have written. I hope you enjoy it.

“No,” you say to T'Challa, even before the doctor has finished speaking.

“No,” you say, and it takes three Dora Milaje and the King of Wakanda to keep you from launching yourself at her. You twist in their grip, biting and scratching like a rabid weasel. Even one-armed you are almost stronger than them.

“No. Put me back.” Howling and begging, tears and snot running down your face, you are an animal clawing at the tiled floor, at anything you can get your hand on. “Put me back. Put me back. No. No. No. No. No.” A litany, a scream.

“James,” you flinch from T'Challa’s hands, gentle on your face. “James,” he says again. “Look at me. Look at me, please.” Maybe you look at him, but you do not see him. The room is loud around you. Your head is loud around you. “This is the only way,” T'Challa says. “The only way. It is this, or the cryochamber forever. There is no other option. You promised him. Do you really want to break your promise to Steve?”

They say his name and you fold, as always. You fold, and T'Challa’s arms come around you as you sob, shuddering and shaking. “Ah, James,” he whispers and presses his lips to your temple. “Ah, my boy. It is a hard thing, living.”

After, when they have washed your face and dressed you; after, in the small room, with small window and the closed door, the woman says, “Bucky, I know this is not what you expected, or what you wanted, but we needed to give you the choice.”

You shiver still.

“Bucky?”

“James,” you rasp, “I want to be James now.”

“Ok, James,” she smiles. “I know you are tired, and you don’t have to rush. Take your time. Think it over.”

There is a dog sitting quietly in the corner of the room. He’s sleek and black, and when he stands, long-legged.

“Is that your dog?” you ask.

“No, the woman, Esihle, says, “that’s your dog.”


	2. Chapter 2

You said, ‘Heroes are needed, so heroes get made.’  
Somebody made a bet, somebody paid.”  
-Bruce Springsteen, “The Devil’s Arcade”

 

The house has good bones, or at least that’s what the realtor tells you. The interior’s a wreck of mold and rot, and the roof is caved in in spots, but the structure is sound and stable. It’s been on the market for years, and the owners are eager to have it off their hands. 

There’s not much to do with a house like this, in a place like this. It sits on the only four acres not yet sold to the neighbors, rows of apple trees stretching out behind it. The small orchard doesn’t yield enough fruit to make a profit, but gives too much fruit to be anything more than a bother. There’s the shell of a barn, and an overgrown patch for a kitchen garden. It’s exactly the type of place some rich, trust-fund hipster kid from Brooklyn with delusions of country living would buy and then abandon within three months once the cold set in.

You’re older and younger than you look and you grew up poor. You’ve never dreamed of living in the country that you can remember, but there’s a lot you don’t remember, and in any case you have no delusions about the fact that living is nothing but hard. But you are Brooklyn born and raised and you know a thing or two about the cold. 

The house has good bones, and now it’s yours. 

Before anything, you set a perimeter. You spend more money than you should putting up an electric gate and lining your tall fences with barbed wire and blackberry bramble. 

Then you spend your first weeks knocking things down. You knock down all the interior walls on the ground floor and all the interior walls in the attic. You leave the three bedrooms on the second floor intact. You tear out the rotting kitchen cabinets, the banisters on the stairs. It’s good honest work and some nights it even leaves you tired enough to sleep. 

You’re stripping the floors a month in when Pilot starts to bark and you hear the rumble of a truck- a Ford pickup by the sound of it- coming in slow before stopping at your gate. You make sure your arm is camouflaged and go out to meet it. The driver rolls the window down but doesn’t get out of the car. She shouldn’t remind you of Peggy- Peggy looked nothing like this sixty-ish black woman with close-cropped, tight curls going grey and strong forearms- but there is something sharp and intelligent in her dark eyes that reminds you of her.

You open your gate and step out into the road to see what she wants.

“So you’re the idiot who bought the Abel place,” she says. 

“Guess I am, ma’am,” you say, flashing a grin.

“Lisa Witkins. I’m your new neighbor. We’re about three miles down the road that way.” 

You know, you checked before you moved in. At three miles she’s the closest neighbor you’ve got. It’s another two miles into town after that. You’re the absolute edge of it- nothing but hills pushing up into mountains behind you. You nod anyway.

“Good to know, neighbor. I’m James,” you reply. You hold out your hand and she sticks her arm out the open window to take it.

“Hello, James. What brings you to Canaan, New York?”

“Well,” you say, and this is easy. This type of lying comes naturally to you. “Grew up poor in Brooklyn, didn’t have that many prospects so I went off to war. I came home to find out that my daddy had died. Didn’t get a penny off of him when I was growing up, but for some reason he left everything to me. Turns out he was rich.” You scuff at the ground, playing at embarrassed. “The city was too loud for me, after-” you shrug, “so I figured I would try this town out, see how it likes me.” 

Lisa gives you a long, assessing stare. “Alright,” she says. “You dealing with this all by yourself?” she nods at the house. 

“Yes, ma’am,” you say. “There’s a lot to be done, but I’m pretty handy.” 

You know how to-

You know how to cut everything off at the source- water, electricity, gas. After that it’s just a waiting game. You flush them out and then pick them off, in a spray of blood and brain-matter one by one. 

James, Esihle’s voice says in your head, your hands are your own.

You know how to lay water lines and gas pipes and electric wiring- but you don’t need to- most of it is still actually there. Good bones, as the realtor had said. 

“Alright.” Lisa says again. “But that roof is a two person job, for sure, and you should get it patched up soon. That tarp isn’t going to do squat come end of September. Howard would be glad to lend a hand.” 

“I really appreciate that. Thank you.”

Lisa leans over to fumble around in the truck until she comes up with her phone in her hand. “Give me a call now so I have your number?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a cell phone,” you shrug. Technically, the tablet T'Challa gave you probably has a phone function, you’re just not very interested in finding out.

“Lord, son,” she says, “what are you going to do in an emergency? I can’t be driving over here every day to check on you.”

You just smile. “Write down your number. I’ll get in touch with you when I get a landline set up.”

In the house, your house, after she’s pulled away, you kneel on the floor, scraper in your hand. On all fours, you scrape away old varnish and sealant. It’s rhythmic, methodic work. You think of emergencies and natural disasters. You think of this old house coming down on top of you and death creeping in slowly like the cold. You think of nature doing what you don’t have the courage to do. Even Steve wouldn’t fault you an accident, a natural disaster.

You scrape through the night and into morning and stand in the early light covered in shavings and dust. The floor is gold, the color of late wheat. Once you stood on the edge of plain somewhere in a country that was once part of the Ukraine. The wheat stretched on for miles, everywhere you could see was wheat. It was enough to feed a whole country. You were dressed in clothing the color of dirt. You were the waiting death. The wheat was very beautiful.

You awake, sudden, covered in sweat and wood shavings. Pilot is lying across your legs, a breathing, steady, grounding weight. Somehow, your dog’s presence always surprises you. You know he was trained for this, but his loyalty seems unfathomable. 

You shock yourself on some wiring, just a small, stupid buzz up your arm and Pilot’s teeth are around your wrist; gentle pressure before the world can slide away from you. “I’m ok,” you pant, nausea roiling up into your chest. You fight not to retch, not to feel the pain that isn’t coming. Your body is tense with not feeling. “I’m ok,” you tell Pilot again, running your hand through his fur. “I’m ok.”

Turns out, the roof is much more than a two person job. Howard stares up at it and grunts. “Got the name of a good contractor, if you want it. He ain’t cheap, but he’s honest and quick. This is too much for just me and you.” 

You nod. Howard Witkins is quiet and steady, more gentle than sharp. It shouldn’t surprise you but it does. It’s just a name, but you had expected someone more explosive, someone more like Howard Stark. You’d liked Howard. You have no opinion of Tony one way or the other- you killed his parents, he tried to kill you. There’s not much to be done about that- but you’d liked Howard. 

Howard wore charisma like armor. He talked fast and loud and too much. His son went one step further, of course, as all sons who never knew their fathers do. Howard loved Steve, though, and never condescended to him, and that made you like him. 

The affection you felt for him back when you were Sergeant Barnes didn’t help him in the end, though, you murdered him all the same.

Howard Witkins smiles slow and talks rarely, and is good with his hands. He helps you reinforce the sagging floor of the barn loft; helps you raise two stall walls, too. He doesn’t ask what they’re for, doesn’t comment at all, only mumbles around an unlit cigarette in his mouth as you’re clearing out some of the old kitchen garden for a chicken run, “Might want to move this a tad bit toward the barn. Smell of chicken shit right next to the kitchen takes all the pleasure out of eating.” So you move the chicken run closer to the barn and leave the kitchen garden to maybe one day be a garden again. 

He’s there every day for a few weeks- until the barn is a barn again, there’s fencing for pasture and a coop for chickens. You offer to pay him, but he blanches, “Lisa would have my head. Don’t you worry. There’s work enough at my place that needs an extra few hands. I’ll call on you soon enough. We outliers gotta stick together.” 

So you take his offered hand and let him slap you on the back, frowning at just another due you’ll never really be able to pay. 

Come July, you have roof and insulation and a small attic room, high like a turret, windows looking to the east and west. You put a camping bed along the far wall, away from the window with your sleeping bag neat on top. The rug’s really for Pilot, but you like the way it feels under your feet when you step on it. It has pulled you from a nightmare more than once- your bare foot on the soft, pebbled grain of it when you are expecting concrete. Your mind is somewhere else entirely, but your body knows.

You allow yourself your favorite knife, kept on your body, even in sleep.

Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car.

In English, they’re just words. You write them out out carefully on strips of paper, and hang them like little prayer flags from the crossbeams. You walk the perimeter of your land. You feed Pilot. You feed yourself, eating a sandwich standing upright in the kitchen. You climb up to your little attic room and open the windows. The night is never still, but it is only nature. It is only the night birds and foxes in the brush. 

One day they will come- Hydra, Shield, any warlord wanting a weapon- it doesn’t matter who, one day they will come and you have only a knife and a misplaced faith that T'Challa is correct. The strips of paper flutter in the breeze, illuminated white in the moonlight. You can read the words even in the dark. You can see the line of your fence, unbroken, even in the dark. All your enemies are before you. 

One day, they will come.

“I’m sorry,” the woman- you’ve forgotten her name already- says, putting herself between you and the stall. The mare is still agitated, snorting as she moves restlessly in the small space, her ears pinned back against her head. She’d tried to bite you, but you moved too fast for her to gain hold of anything but your jacket sleeve. “I’m sorry that you came all the way out here,” the woman says again. “She can be so difficult. Poppy’s not very- nice.”

Poppy is a tall, long-necked bay, with one black stocking climbing up her left foreleg. She is, you are beginning to see, altogether too mean for this family-friendly teaching school, and probably not good enough to compete. That explains the price. You stand sideways and watch her, careful to avoid looking her in the eye. Her ears flick under your gaze, muscles flinching down her body. She whickers- it is not a welcoming sound. 

“I’ll take her,” you say. 

You get another horse, because you have some idea that horses need company. Mungbean is an old, big grey draft horse who spent his days pulling a tourists around the Shaker village in Chatham. He’s not much good for anything other than grazing anymore, but you’re happy to let him live out the rest of his years in quiet. He and Poppy don’t get along, per say, mostly he just ignores her while she flings her neck to and fro in a fit of nerves, but since he’s arrived, Poppy’s stopped cribbing at stall posts, so you’ll take what you can get. 

Poppy, for her part, soon learns that biting T'Challa’s arm hurts her more than it hurts you and that you are pretty impervious to being thrown or even kicked. She still pins her ears back and bares her teeth every time you enter her stall, but it’s a half-hearted threat. 

On your bad nights, you take her out and ride her in tight figure eights and then up into the hills, crashing through the brush at a fast gallop, making your own path for as long as you, she and Pilot can keep it up. You doze on your way back, swaying in the saddle, reins held loosely in your hands. She knows her way home. On your bad nights, this leaves you almost tired enough to sleep.

You do not remember your worst nights at all.

The animals are more work than you expected, the town, too. It’s work to drive down the 295 into town to stock up on groceries and then out into Chatham to replace the drill bit you broke. It’s work, making an appearance at the annual Labor Day barbeque Lisa told you about down at the firehouse. You were made to put on the trappings of personhood like a man shrugging on a coat. You were made to be nothing, no one, a shape the eye slides over without ever seeing. It was not work when you were the Soldier. It was not work in Bucharest. It is work here. 

“Your brain is healing. It is not easy thing. I am sorry, James,” Esihle would say. 

You sit for a few long minutes, hands resting on the wheel, the truck engine ticking cool, watching the townspeople move around in each other in an easy and familiar dance. A man puts his hand on the small of a woman’s back. A mother, engrossed in conversation, cleans her toddler’s face without looking. Someone yells something across the lawn. You spot Howard drinking a beer, talking to someone you don’t know. 

“I’m not hiding,” you tell Esihle in your head. “I’m not hiding.”

You know she would smile, and say, “There’s nothing wrong with trying to make yourself feel safe, James. But it does not suit our purposes in this particular instance.”

You breath and breath with the car engine. 

“You ready to go rebuild some brain synapses?” you ask Pilot. He licks at your hands in response. You open the door and get out. 

You stay for exactly a half an hour, Pilot frantically nipping at your wrist the whole time. The people move around you in wary friendliness. You are death come. You are the plague at their doorstep. 

You speed home. Here is your house. Here are your apple trees, fruit still too young to eat. Here are your chickens, your horses, your perimeter, unbroken. Here is your room, your high-up space. Here is. Here is. 

Shudder and shake and sink to the ground. Your cheek on the woven rug. Your hand on hard wood. Shudder and shake and disappear.


	3. II. Willow

“What would you say,” Esihle says, leaning forward in her chair just a bit, the movement forcing your eyes to focus. She is slender and long-legged in a yellow cotton dress and has swimmer’s arms- muscles lithe and long. She’s stronger than she looks. Her voice is gentle though, melodic. You wonder if it’s always like this, or if this is just her therapist voice. “What would you think,” she asks again, “about a dog that has been trained to fight, to kill other dogs? There are dogs like that, you know- their nature twisted by the cruelty of men. Would you blame such a dog? Is it guilty for the death it has caused?” 

This is where you joke, roll your eyes and needle her, as if she were any other woman you’re out to charm: So I’m a dog now, you should say. You’re my therapist. Aren’t you supposed to be nice? It’s such an obvious metaphor. Aren’t you supposed to be the best? Try harder, Esihle. 

You can’t find the energy though. It’s been a few days, but you’re still cold and slow and tired from the ice. 

“No,” you rasp finally, “I wouldn’t blame the dog. I’d still put it down, though. Dog like that ain’t fit for anything anymore.” 

“Isn’t it?” Esihle says.

“You’d risk having a dog like that just wandering around, fitting to hurt people, out of pity? That’s stupid.” 

She smiles. “You would kill an animal just because you don’t want to put in the effort to rehabilitate it? That’s stupid.”

“Sure,” you say, just to be contrary, and turn your face, pressing your nose into the back of your chair. This is stupid. You are not some cute abused dog. You are- you have done things, terrible things. You may still do them again. 

“I wanted to die,” you say, “I wanted to die and they wouldn’t let me.”

Esihle is quiet. “I know,” she says finally, “I can understand that. It is a terrible thing that was done to you. You have endured and suffered more than any person should ever have to suffer and endure. You can go back to the cryochamber whenever you want, if that is what you want. Nobody will stop you. Nobody will blame you if you want to rest. We’ll try and find another way.” 

“Do you think it’s likely that there is another way?”

“No, I do not think it’s likely.”

“Ok,” you say. “Ok.” 

“You know what I think,” she says, and leans almost all the way out of her chair, so close her hands are just touching yours. You curl yourself inwards, wrapping your arms around yourself. “I think, James, that there is a little animal inside of you that wants to live; despite everything, it wants to live. And I think we should try and give that animal a little bit of time and attention and love.”

You close your eyes. If there is anything in you that doesn’t want to die, it is a rat or a weasel, a clawed, biting thing, as ugly and bloodied as you are. What an absurd thing- to want to love a rat.


	4. Chapter 4

“With these hands,  
I pray, Lord.”  
-Bruce Springsteen, “My City of Ruins”

There is a girl in your chicken coop. It is mid-afternoon on a late-September Tuesday and there is a girl in your chicken coop -skinny arms full of eggs, dirty brown-blond hair in her face, yolk dripping on her ratty t-shirt, sliding down the legs of her jeans and onto her torn sneakers. She can’t be more than 11 or 12. She stares at you, dark eyes defiant, as if you’re the one standing in her chicken coop stealing her eggs and not the other way around. 

“Well?” you say, when you’ve found your voice again. 

She doesn’t answer, just stares. She’s- she’s trembling finely like a rabbit. 

“Well,” you say again, “come on, then,” and she follows you into the house. You feed her a three-egg omelet, which she packs away with impressive speed and gusto. She’s too thin, so you make her another one and she eats that too. 

“Alright,” you say when she’s done and leaning back in her chair hazily. “Get up.” She scrambles to her feet, the chair scraping against the kitchen floor in her haste. “Now that you’ve eaten my food, you’re going to help me feed the animals.” 

You lead her back out the back door and towards the barn, hefting a bag of chicken feed onto your shoulder along the way.

“Doesn’t look like you need much help,” she mutters. 

You don’t need much help at all, but you make a show of it anyway. “Only got two hands,” you say, and then laugh at your own joke. She stops and stares again- T'Challa’s arm is camouflaged, and there’s a little bit of lunatic in your rusty laugh. You raise your arms up, bag of feed still balanced on your shoulder, and wriggle your fingers. “Come on, little thief, there are chickens to be fed. You ate their eggs. It’s the least you can do.”

“Fine,” she grouses. 

You leave her with the feed where you found her- in the chicken coop. By the time you get back from mucking out Mungbean’s stall she’s gone. 

Later that night it occurs to you to wonder how she got to you, and what she intended to do with all those eggs. 

 

You wake slowly, blinking in the banded dusty light. You’re sitting on hard, packed dirt, wood digging into your back behind you. Pilot is barking up a storm somewhere nearby. Your eyes fall on Poppy’s saddle strewn beside you. You managed to untack her at least before you knocked out. You hope you remembered to get her bridle off too. You strain your neck up. Yes, there’s her bridle hanging neatly on the hook beside her stall. That’s all right then. 

You push yourself to your knees, joints stiff and aching a bit.

“You look like shit.” She’s standing down the pass, indistinct and framed by the sun coming in the open barn door. Christ, you left the barn door open. What the fuck was happening with you last night? You’re lucky it’s just the girl. You’re lucky- you deserve anything that would come to you, careless like that. 

The kid’s lucky, too. She’s just out of your reach. She’s lucky you were awake. She’s lucky she didn’t touch you, or try to shake you into waking. She’s lucky-

Bodies all over the floor, limbs twisted and turned, little birds, little twigs. Just an orphanage in some little out of the way town in Tashkent. You weren’t there for the children, but they were slaughtered all the same, their corpses bleeding out all over the floor. Oh, the stench of it in heat- the steady thrum of the fan, the pictures of Lenin on the wall. They were laid out like sacrifices. Blood on the doorposts, on the window frames. The angel of death come for these nameless children. The blood soaked through your boots.

Did you kill them? You don’t know. You probably will never know. You weren’t there for them. It was one of the teachers your masters were after and it wasn’t like them to have you leave a mess behind. They took everything from you, but you were still a sniper. The children were killed messily at close range. It wasn’t like you- if indeed there ever was a you, if you were ever anything other than a weapon to be used- it wasn’t like you to kill that way. 

You tried looking it up, but you found nothing. Whatever happened it was lost behind the iron curtain and the iron will of history- just one small travesty in one small town at the edge of nothing.

She’s lucky-

She’s a little worse for wear herself-jeans ripped, t-shirt dirty, greasy hair falling all over her face. 

You pull yourself to your feet, grimacing. “So do you,” you reply. It’s been a couple of weeks since you last saw her and they’ve been bad weeks. You’re edgy and wary, anxiety rising up from your belly into your limbs for no reason you can really discern. 

“What happened to your arm?” she nods to where T'Challa’s arm is bared, dark metal gleaming and naked for all the world- or rather, for all of her- to see.

“What do you think happened to my arm?” 

She cocks her head, watching as the metal shifts like tectonic plates. “It’s stupid when people say ‘I lost an arm’. You didn’t, like, put it somewhere and forget it.”

No, your arm was taken from you and you were awake and screaming.

“You’re right,” you say. “I didn’t lose my arm.”

“Ok,” she says, scuffing at the ground.

“You here to help?” you ask.

“I guess,” she shrugs. “You got any more food?”

“How’d you get here?” you ask her as she’s scarfing down her second peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s not much, but it’s what you’ve got in the house. You haven’t been much for grocery shopping lately and you don’t trust yourself with the oven or stove these days. You lose time too easily especially near evening, when your mind is tired and worn out from the sheer effort it takes not to go to pieces all day. 

“Bike,” she says, through mouthfuls. 

“How were you planning on getting all those eggs back by bike, huh?”

She shrugs.

“What were you going to do with them anyway?”

She pushes her plate away and takes a drink of milk. “The babies wanted pancakes, and douchebag Jason ate the last of our eggs, so…” she shrugs again, running her fingers along the edge of the ceramic.

“That’s a lot of effort for eggs,” you say. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to take ‘em from the grocery store instead of biking five miles and sneaking under my fence?” You found the hole in the fence, but you haven’t patched it up yet, despite the way it makes your skin slither, despite the way you feel it always like a pair of eyes on you throughout your day. 

“Yeah, well,” she replies, “if Rafa caught me, he’d tell my mother, and then she’d tell my stepdad and he’d get all mad.”

You lift an eyebrow. “I might tell you mother.” It’s not a real threat. You don’t like the sound of that stepdad, or douchebag Jason, whoever he is.

“You don’t even know my name,” she scoffs. 

“Let’s fix that,” you say. “What’s your name?”

“Willow,” she says, her sneakers thumping against the table leg. You must make a face, because she sighs, and says, “yeah, I know, it’s a really weird name, but like, my mom was really into Buffy or something like that,” she rolls her eyes, “so it’s whatever.”

You don’t know what Buffy is and Willow doesn’t seem any weirder than any of the other names you’ve encountered in this new age, so you just nod. Pilot wanders into the kitchen and settles himself by your side, nosing at your wrist. 

“Well?” Willow says.

“Huh?” you ask. 

“You’re supposed to tell me your name now.” 

You blink. “Oh. Yeah. James,” you say, and it sticks in your throat somehow. You swallow with the effort of not saying Bucky. “My name is James, and this here is Pilot.”

“I know that,” she rolls her eyes. “You call to him all the time.”

“ Well, aren’t you smart?” you reply. “Speaking of, shouldn’t you be in school?” It’s only about mid-day. 

“School is stupid,” she says. 

It seems like a shame to waste a free education. You know she actually is smart- you’ve seen her eyeing your books, but you haven’t really got room to talk- you dropped out after your junior year and went to work at the docks. Your family wasn’t starving, but it was still the Depression. It wasn’t like you had the luxury to do any different.

“I’ll pay you,” you say suddenly, your mouth having a tongue of it’s own.

“What?” she says. 

“I’ll pay you to come help me with the animals. Every day. 4:30 pm. 5 dollars a day.” 5 dollars was a fortune in your day, it’s probably nothing to her.

She narrows her eyes. “Is this some sort of plot to get me to go to school? Because I told you, school’s stupid.”

“I don’t really give a fuck about whether or not you go to school when you’re not here, but you get here at 4:30 pm sharp, every day. You want the money or not?”

 

It’s a bad idea. You know it’s a bad idea the moment she closes the door behind her. It puts a pit in your stomach. It’s not safe, having her around all the time. It’s a terrible idea. Pilot, sensing your agitation, presses against your legs as you pace the living room. You get in your truck and drive to the Witkins. 

Lisa opens the door almost immediately. “What’s this, James?” she says, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind her. 

You give her your best shit-eating grin, thrusting the jar of apple butter into her hands. She looks at it with the look of a woman who has seen too many apples in her lifetime. 

“Just a little thank-you gift for helping this city boy stay alive out here in the country,” you say.

“Well, thank-you. It’s good to have a neighbor to rely on.”

“I could say the same.”

Lisa makes to go back into the house but you stay where you are, shuffling your feet a little. She looks at you and back at the truck. “Anything else?”

“I, uh. I just wanted to let you know that I hired Willow to come help me with the animals in the afternoons. I didn’t know- I don’t know if I should be telling someone- her mother, maybe?- I just- I thought someone should know.”

“The Morrison girl?” Lisa frowns. 

“I guess so. She didn’t tell me her last name.” How many Willows could there be in this town? “Why? Is she trouble.”

“No. She’s no trouble- at least not yet. Her brother, though, Jason, he’s a fair bit of trouble. Nothing major so far- just a bit of vandalism and drugs- but he and his friends- well, they’re about as close to a gang as this little town gets. It could develop into something big-or it could not. Willow’s a bit young for all that though.”

“Good,” you say. “I’m not looking to get involved in anything. I just thought-”

“It might do her some good, actually,” Lisa interrupts you. “She’s a good kid. Smart. This town underestimates that Morrison family. I think she’ll do well, having someone looking out for her a bit.”

“I’m not-” you protest. “I’ve just asked her to feed the animals, that’s all.”

“Even so.” She looks at you under the yellow light of the porch lamp. “I’ll come look in on you guys every once in awhile. See how you’re getting on.”

“That’s- that’d be good. Thank you, Lisa,” you say. 

 

Steve comes to you that night in a dream that is almost an hallucination. He stands in front of you, sneering. “I never knew you to run, Buck,” he says. “But I guess I wrong.” You ran from Steve, you ran from T'Challa, you ran from Tony Stark, and now, here you are, running from a little girl.

But in the morning light you know- Esihle would say- that that’s not really Steve’s voice in your head, that’s your own voice. It’s true, you know that. Steve wouldn’t- Steve would lay his hand on your temple and frown and say, “you’re feeling kind of warm, Buck. Why don’t you go lay down, rest your eyes a bit.” Steve would put his body- any body of his- in front of yours. “You go nurse that headache. I’ll take care of this,” he’d say. 

You didn’t have a headache before, but you allow yourself one. You put 5 dollars and a list of instructions on the kitchen table and buzz Willow in from the cool darkness of your attic room. You stretch out on your camping bed and close your eyes against the dull throbbing in your temple. You do not think about Willow. You do not think about Steve. You ache.

The next day you leave 5 dollars on the counter again, and drive out to Chatham to look at Shaker furniture for a few hours. You like the clean lines and complex simplicity of the joints and corners. You like the way the wood seems to glow in the afternoon light. You look down at your treacherous hands. I can do that, you think. 

On the third day she comes to find you.

“Mr.- James?” she’s standing in your doorway, hair in her eyes, tracking mud and smelling of chicken shit. 

“Yeah,” you say, blocking her way before she can actually step foot in your room.

“Are you-I haven’t seen you in a few days-” she pauses, craning her neck to try and peer around your body into the attic. “No wonder people think you’re weird,” she mutters, eyes catching on one of the slips of paper fluttering in the breeze of the open window.

You raise your eyebrows. “Willow,” you bark. “What?”

She takes a step back, her cheeks pinking at getting caught. “I just wanted to make sure you were ok,” she says.

“Oh,” you say. It hadn’t occurred to you that she would notice, or worry. “I’m fine. Just busy.”

“Ok,” she replies, but doesn’t move.

“Anything else?”

“Have you got any more food? I’m hungry.” 

“So,” you say, as Willow scarfs down her cream cheese sandwich. “People think I’m weird.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, you’re obviously rich because you bought this place, and only a rich person would be stupid enough to buy a falling down house in this poor-ass town. You’re too rich to be here, that’s why people think you’re weird.”

“Maybe I like poor people.”

“What does that mean? Poor people are just, like, people except they don’t have any money.”

“Ok,” you smile. “Maybe I don’t like rich people.”

“But you’re rich.”

You shrug. “Could be.” You open the cupboard and pull out the potatoes. Might as well get a start on dinner. “Do you think I’m weird?” you ask her. 

“Sure,” Willow says, “but not because of the house. I think you’re weird because you sleep in a creepy attic when you have three perfectly fine bedrooms to choose from. That’s weird.”

“Guess, I’m weird then, kid,” you say. You tap her empty plate. “Come on, dishes. I’ll wash and you dry.”

“Ugh,” she grumbles, as she gets up, “and you didn’t even put in a dishwasher. You built this whole new kitchen without a dishwasher. You are so weird.”

You wash, and she dries, and when you let her out into the darkening day, you find that it wasn’t so bad at all. 

 

You do not recognize Willow’s childhood. She throws herself around you with abandon in jeans and a t-shirt, hair all over the place, full of noise and movement. She bangs doors, kicks rocks, tracks mud, and sings off-key in in barn. For all that you had grown up in the same house, your sisters were a mystery to you. They had quickly learned how to sit still and straight backed, their true selves hidden under starched blouses and buttoned cardigans, inscrutable half smiles. They were hidden from you, their brother, behind the veil of womanhood, which seemed to you a far off land of strange customs and scents. You never knew whether your sisters were happy. It never occurred to you that you could ask.

It was not them, you know, it was the time. You wish they could see Willow, if only so that they could know that it was possible for a girl to grow this way- long-legged and running, all her emotions quick on her face. And maybe they did, after all. They did not see Willow, but they had children and grandchildren, girls and boys alike. You hope it pleased them, the possibility of a childhood like this for a girl. 

It pleases you. You like seeing her like this, even when, like today she throws a fit over the light grey color you have painted your living room walls. She has very definite ideas of what a home should look like, and light grey does not meet her approval. So you take her up to the guest bedroom and tell her that the room is hers to decorate as she likes. That placates her a bit, but she’s still frowning when she leaves and still, it pleases you.

It pleases you to see her launch herself over the pasture fence, breath misting in the air as she takes advantage of Mungbean’s lowered head to grab at his mane and pull herself up onto his back. She digs her legs into his side, whooping. Mungbean snorts and moves two lazy steps. 

You live in fear of the day she will disregard your strict instructions and find her way into Poppy’s stall, but Mungbean, Mungbean is as harmless as they come.

“James,” she yells, “can you teach me how to ride?”

“No,” you yell back. 

“Aww, c’mon,” she laughs, “didn’t you hear? Captain America’s back. Iron Man gave him his shield and everything. I gotta go fight aliens.” 

“Mungbean is too old to fight aliens. He’s retired,” you tell her. “Now come on down, we still gotta hose down the chicken hutch and we’re losing light.” 

“Fine,” she grumbles, but she swings her legs over Mung’s back and slides down to the ground. “You’re no fun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, pulling a piece of straw out of her hair, “I’ve heard that before.”

You do not pray, you have not prayed since Steve’s Ma died and Steve stopped going to Mass. He was so angry then, not at her death, because by the time she died it had been a blessing, she was in so much pain, but at the lie of redemption and reward. His Ma was the best woman you had ever known, and she suffered so. Steve was furious with it, a false God of mercy. And if Steve was angry, you were angry. That was the way it was between the two of you, your emotions bleeding from one of you into the other. He stopped going, so you stopped going and you stopped praying. 

You do not pray, but you think of the skies opening above you and those alien creatures pouring out like bombs, like a flock of crows going after an intruder. You are not afraid of them, you are only afraid of what humans will do with them. You know what true evil is, you have been the true evil and you know it is coming. It will sweep Willow away from you. It will sweep you away from Willow. 

You do not pray, but you dream, you dream of Willow’s blood pooling on the floor beneath you. You dream of the sound she might make when she is terrified- not a scream, but a whimper- a whimper that has you waking in a sweat, already on your feet, already armed, Pilot barking frantically at your feet.

You do not pray, but you think of Steve picking up that shield again, throwing his body into the scrum of battle. You know it is part of him. it has always been part of him, even before they gave him this body, but still it makes your hair stand on end and you clench your fists with the effort of not not throwing yourself after him. You do not pray, but he is with you, always, always picking up that shield, and you can only say, no, no, don’t do it, don’t do it Stevie, so maybe that’s a prayer after all. 

 

It is well into the night when she knocks on your door, tears tracking down her face, nose dripping with snot. She’s shaking-- not wearing a coat even in the cold December air. 

“Willow?” you say. It will take you 3 minutes to run to the storm cellar and arm yourself. A knife won’t do to protect her against what is coming. It will take you 4 minutes to get to the storm cellar with Willow in your arms, dump her there and then arm yourself. “Willow,” you say again, “what’s wrong?” 

“James,” she says. The quiet is unnerving. No cars. No footsteps. No whine of aircraft above you. Pilot sits calm by your side. 

“Did someone hurt you? Is someone after you? Willow-” you shake her a little.

“No, no,” she stammers, shaking her head. “Just- James” she lifts her arms up- the universal symbol for pick me up, and so you do, you pick her up and walk her backwards inside, kicking the door closed with your foot. 

She is cold in your arms as you stumble to the couch and sit without looking. Your body must have once held a child like this- your sisters, maybe. Your body must know what this is, the closeness, the smell of the cold on her skin, her soft greasy hair against your cheek, the way she clutches at your shirt as she cries. You do not remember this, but your body must know because it does not flinch away, the way it does at so many other touches: a brush past you in the grocery aisle, Howard Witkin’s hand on your shoulder, even T'Challa’s grip on your elbow- all of these you have flinched from involuntarily for a fraction of a second before you could will yourself into stillness. 

“Hey Willow, Will-o-wisp,” you tighten your embrace. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” she sits up rubbing at her eyes, “nothing, it was nothing. Mom and the babies are out and Jason and my step-dad were fighting. They always do- but I just got scared. I don’t know why, they’re always at each other, but I was scared. So I came here.”

“That’s ok,” you tell her. “That’s fine. You can always come here if you’re scared. Do you want me to go check it out?” 

“No,” she says, pushing herself out of your grip and getting to her feet. “That’s stupid, this whole thing is stupid,” she smooths her hair off her face. “Nothing really happened. I was just being stupid, that’s all.”

“Ok,” you say again. “You want some water?” You think you’re supposed to offer tea or cocoa, but you have neither, and coffee seems like a bad idea at this hour. 

“Yes,” she says. 

You give her milk and buttered toast instead. She eats listlessly, taking small bites, only half chewing. “Hey,” she says, swallowing, “can I stay here tonight? I don’t know when my Mom’s going to be home and I don’t want to be there with them if they’re there, and if they’re not, I’ll be alone.”

You frown. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I get bad nightmares sometimes. I might frighten you.” You might hurt her. You might kill her. 

“I’m not afraid,” she lifts her chin.

“It’s not a good idea,” you repeat. “But come on now, I’ll take you to Howard and Lisa. You can stay there tonight.” 

“I don’t want to go to Howard and Lisa’s”, she grouses. 

“It’s either there, or I can take you home. Those are the options.”

“Fine,” she says, kicking at the table leg, “I’ll go to Howard and Lisa’s.” 

Howard’s eyebrows lift when he opens the door. “Hello, James,” he says, “Willow. What brings you out here this evening?”

Willow’s mouth is a thin line of silence and her hand, smothered in the sleeve of your overlarge sweater you made her wear, tightens in yours.

“Willow was wondering if she could stay here for the night,” you explain, “Her ma’s out and she didn’t want to be alone at home.” 

“Well, of course, Willow,” Howard opens the door and steps aside so you can usher Willow in. “We’d be happy to have you for the night. We’ve got plenty of room.” 

“Howard,” Lisa comes into the foyer, wiping her hands on a towel, “is that James I hear? Is everything o-Oh, hello, Willow.”

“Willow would like to stay for the night,” Howard says, “I told her it would be fine.”

“Of course it’s fine,” Lisa says, holding your gaze. “Howard, why don’t you go get Willow settled. I’d like to to talk to James for a bit.”

“Come on, Willow,” Howard says, “let me go show you the guest room.”

“What’s going on?” Lisa asks you as soon as Willow and Howard have cleared the corner. 

You wait until you can hear two steps of footsteps moving up the stairs to answer. “It’s probably nothing,” you tell Lisa, “her brother and step-dad were fighting- she says it happens all the time- but she got scared enough to run to me in the middle of the night. I figured it was worth checking out.” 

The butt of your handgun is digging into your hip. You thought your hand would shake when you loaded it, but your body moved steady and swift, by rote. Violence, it seems, is encoded in your blood, you’re never going to shake it. What’s been done cannot be undone. 

Lisa nods. “Let me just grab my coat,” she says. 

All the lights of the Morrison house are blazing when you arrive, but you see no movement through the bare windows. It’s a small house, a one floor flat-ranch, sitting squat on a little rise covered in patchy grass. The front steps sag a little, but otherwise it’s in pretty good condition. 

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” Lisa says. 

“No,” you concur as you slide out of the front seat. Lisa follows. “I’m going to have a look anyway.”

The door’s easy to jimmy. You push Lisa behind you and step softly onto the green carpet and into the electric light. 

The Morrison house smells like Brooklyn. It is the scent of too many children and not enough money; of Mrs. Sullivan, pregnant again, and Steve’s Ma muttering about how she’s going to castrate the bastard. It is rancid milk and tinned beans crusting over where they spilled on the floor. It is human sweat and fish oil from the docks; cigarette smoke and piss. Lisa gags a little behind you.

It is hard to distinguish between the mess of the fight, and the mess of the house, but a fight most certainly occurred here. You can see the pattern of it- two men, one larger than the other, lost in a frenzy of violence. The chair overturned first. They careened against the wall, splintering the wood panelling and knocking over a lamp. It was a fight alright, but not a deadly one. There’s no blood on the carpets or the walls. The sink in the kitchen is loaded with dirty dishes, but it’s just the remains of food, nothing more. You suspect that the bathrooms will show the same.

“Good lord,” Lisa says, “they really got into it didn’t they?”

You grunt in response. “Stay here,” you tell her, “I’m going to go have a look around.”

The two bedrooms at the back of the house are tight with a pair of bunk beds in each, clothes strewn every which way and the smell of unwashed sheets and diapers thick in the air. You wonder which bed is Willow’s. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for any more. It’s clear there’s no one here. Whatever it is though, it’s not in the kids’ bedrooms and that’s a relief. You open the windows a crack on your way out. 

The master bedroom is as neat as an army barrack. The bed is made, the rug on its right aligned at dead even. Every object on the heavy wood dresser has its place. There is no dust. The curtains are closed, the bedside lamps are off, and the gun safe on the floor in the corner is wide open, revealing the dull, black shape of a handgun evident, damning. 

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter. The handgun is loaded, but the clip, when you break it down, is full and the gun is cool to the touch. It hasn’t been fired lately. 

You stick the clip in your pocket and the unloaded gun into your other side-holster. Lisa’s cluttering around in the kitchen, probably trying to make some order so she can start cleaning. 

A car slows and pulls into the drive, the gravel crackling under its wheels.

Two steps to the living room.

Your betraying gun is aimed square at the door. “Lisa,” you hiss, “get behind me.” 

Headlights sweep over the house. The car engine stutters to a stop. The headlights go dark. Lisa breathes harsh behind you. One car door slams. Then another. And yet another. A woman asks a question, but you can’t hear an answer. Four sets of footsteps, light on the pavement. One of them lists uneven. The woman speaks again. A child replies. 

“James,” Lisa says, “it’s just Mare- it’s just Willow’s mother. Put that down.” She tugs at your arm. “Put the gun down, James.”

The door opens. 

It is just- she is small, like Willow- the same long face and lank light hair falling into her eyes.There’s a baby on her hips and three other kids of various ages- two girls and a boy- clinging to her shirt and jeans. She’s loaded down with big plastic bags, the kind you get at thrift stores- she’d been shopping. 

She screams. “Holy fucking shit.”

Lisa ducks under your arms, hands up in conciliation. “Hey Mare, Mariel- it’s just me, it’s Lisa. Lisa and James. You know James, right? Everything’s fine, Mare. Willow just got scared and we thought-”

“Why do you have gun?” Mare asks you.

“Why do you have a gun?” you reply.

“I don’t,” she says, “I don’t ever have a gun.”

You holster your own weapon and pull out the unloaded handgun. You hold it out to her. “The open gun safe in your bedroom says otherwise,” you say. “You make it a habit of keeping the guns around here easy to access?”

“Les wouldn’t,” she blanches, “he keeps that safe locked. He wouldn’t. Not with the babies in the house.The kids know not to go in there.” As if Willow weren’t one of her babies. As if-you clench your teeth in rising anger. 

“Listen-” you move in on her. She steps back, and the children go tripping back with her. 

“Ok,” Lisa says. “That’s enough. Let’s all just settle down here. Mare, come on in, and shut the door behind you. You’re letting the cold in. James, put that away. You’re scaring the children.” 

You put it away. Mare closes the door and the children scatter around her, safe in their own territory again. 

“I know who you are,” Mare says to you, “I don’t like you.” The baby on her hip begins to whimper, pulling on the collar of her t-shirt, trying to get to her breast. She bounces the kid absentmindedly. 

“Ok,” you say.

“She ain’t your kid, Willow, she’s mine, and you’ve got no business-”

“Hey,” Lisa interrupts again. “Alright. Mare, we are not trying to undermine your authority here. James knows full well where he stands in Willow’s life. We were just trying to make sure everything was ok over here. So why don’t you go put those kids to bed and feed Holly and me and James will do a little clean up, ok?” 

Mare pulls her shoulders back. “Kids,” she snaps, “bed.” 

The two little girls go scrambling down the hall, but the boy-he’s probably about 8- just rolls his eyes under his baseball cap and stumbles exaggeratedly to the couch where he pulls out his phone and begins to play a game.

Mare seems satisfied with two out of three. She adjusts the cranky baby on her hip. “I’m going to go feed her.”

“We’ll be here,” Lisa says. 

“I’m going to sweep the basement,” you tell Lisa as soon as Mare has disappeared down the hallway. 

“That’s fine,” she says. “I’ll start on the dishes.”

The boy’s eyes follow you from under his cap as you cross the living room. He’s trying to make it look like he’s concentrating on his game, but failing miserably. He sticks his tongue out at you as you pass. 

You find a rifle, a bowie knife and a box full of ammunition in the basement. They are not locked up, but to Les’s credit, they are stored high up above a metal cabinet and well hidden. It would be hard for a child to get to them. Hard, but not impossible. 

By the time you get back upstairs, weapons in hand, Mare has returned sans baby. She’s frowning at Lisa’s back as Lisa makes headway on the pile of dishes. You let the rifle and box of ammunition clatter onto the sticky linoleum of the table top, making both women startle and turn. 

Mare’s still frowning, this time at the items on the table in front of her. “Les’s is going to be so angry when he realizes his stuff is gone,” she says. 

The mechanical click as you unlock the safety is loud in the kitchen. It’s an easy shot, straight through the head. You could make it in your sleep.“I don’t give a fuck about Les and his anger,” you say, low, stepping to the right so that the kid in the living room can’t see you. “I don’t give a fuck-How do you think this is going to end, Mare? Were you just hoping, praying that the kids don’t get curious? Would you rather Les angry with a gun in the house? 

“I’ll tell you how it’s going to end, Mare. It’s going to end with bullet in your head, or in the head of one of your babies, your precious babies. That’s how it’s going to end.” 

You lock the safety and re-holster your weapon. Your hands are not shaking. Mare’s eyes are screwed tight, her hands clenched in the loose material of her shirt. “If Les gets angry,” you say to her, “you just go on and tell him the truth. Tell him I took his guns. He’s welcome to try and take them back if he wants.”

She’s crying now, tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes, “I’m no good at this,” she says. 

“I don’t care,” you snap. “Is this everything?” you gesture to the pile on the table.

“Yes,” she flinches, “no. I don’t know. I think so. I’m no good at this, Lisa,” she repeats. “I don’t- I don’t know-” 

Lisa folds Mare into her arms. “It’s alright, now. It’s all over. Nothing happened. Everything’s fine,” she says, stroking Mare’s hair. 

“Maybe you should just take them,” she mumbles into Lisa’s shirt. “You should just call the Sheriff and let him take them. I ain’t fit for this.”

“Oh hush,” Lisa says, “all’s well that end’s well. Don’t you worry. Me and Howard and James are looking out for you now. There’s no need to worry. You got my number and I’ll give you James’s. You just call if you need us. Any time, ok?”

“Ok,” Mare says, wiping her cheeks and turning to face you. “I still don’t like you,” she says. 

“That’s fine,” you say. “I’m not the type of person people like.” 

“I guess you’re doing ok with Willow, though. She’s going to school now. It’s good that she’s got a bit of money. She wanted to give it to me, but I told her to keep it. She should put it away for college, or something.”

You’re not sure you have anything to do with the fact that Willow’s gone back to school. “She’s a good kid. Smart. She’ll do well in college,” you say.

There’s a flicker of a smile on Mare’s face. “Yeah, she will.”

The boy’s standing in the kitchen doorway when you turn to leave. “I’m not going with you guys,” he scowls. “I don’t care if you call the cops, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere, Taylor,” Lisa says. “James and I were just leaving, but you’re going to stay here and help your mother, ok?”

“Whatever,” he says, and kicks at your shin as you pass. You smile at him slowly, showing your teeth, and sure that no one else is looking, you let T'Challa’s arm flick to dark metal and give him the finger. 

 

You step out onto the frozen grass, hard and brittle under your boots. It has not snowed yet this year, but the temperatures have been hovering in the low teens overnights. It is like a Siberian spring. It is like that first arm-less step under the sky, Steve’s arm around your waist, steadying you. Who were you in that moment? You did not know. Who are you now? You do not know. Steve would know, but that’s part of the problem isn’t it?

Now you are shaking

Now you are hunched over, hands pressed into your face, the tears freezing as they fall. You give a small cry. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck this fucking shit.”

Lisa touches your arm and takes the keys from your hand. “James,” she says gently, “let’s go.” She gets into the driver’s seat. You cannot stop shaking. You wrap your arms around yourself and lean your head on the window, shuddering. Lisa turns on the heat. 

Name your emotions, Esihle would say. 

It is not the weapon. It is not the gun you held so easily in your hands, or the way you wielded it. It is not that your body knew what it was made for- to do harm, to kill- it is fury. It is rage. You hate being angry. As if Willow wasn’t one of her kids to be protected. As if any of her kids were safe living like that. Jesus. 

Really? Esihle would say. That is all? You have a lot to be angry about and you may be angry about more than one thing at a time, but be honest about it. 

Shut the fuck up, Esihle, you say. You want- you pull on the long strands of hair falling down over your face- you are so tired. What you were will never leave you. No matter how much you insulate yourself from your past, you are still the gun in your hand. You could have made that shot in your sleep.

Yes, Esihle, fine, I am angry. I am furious about this too.

“I’m sorry,” you tell Lisa. “I’m sorry. I was just so angry.” 

She glances at you out of the corner of her eye as she swings the truck on to the 295. “That’s alright,” she says. “There’s a lot to be angry about.” She peers back at the rifle and ammunition lying on the seat behind you. “I’ll have Howard lock those up in our safe.”

Willow is in the kitchen with Howard when you get back. “Oh, hello,” Howard smiles at you and leans over to give Lisa a quick peck on the lips. “Willow and I were just making hot cocoa. Would you like some?”

“Sure,” you say. It’s been over 70 years since you’ve last had hot cocoa. “Hey there, Willow,” you say, “how’re you doing?” 

“Fine,” she shrugs. She’s still dressed in your sweater, cradling a mug of cocoa in her hands. 

“Your mom’s back home,” Lisa says, reaching over the stove to ladle herself some cocoa, “everything seemed fine over there. Jason and your step-dad have left. Do you want to go back home?”

“Nah,” Willow says, “my step-dad’s probably out drinking and he’ll still be mad when he comes back. Douchebag will be gone for days though, that’s good.” 

You need to ask. “Willow, do you know how many guns your step-dad had in the house?”

“Just the one in the bedroom,” she furrows her brows, “I know not to touch it.”

“Ok.” The idea that Les or Jason might be running around town armed still worries you. You don’t care much what happens to either of them if they have a go at each other outside of the house, but both of them think of Willow’s house as their own territory and you’re afraid that their idiotic pissing contest could still potentially leave Willow in the crossfire. “You ever see any guns or anything like that again around the house, or either of them armed in any way, you give me a call, ok? I’ll come and deal with it.”

“Ok,” she says, apparently unperturbed. “James, can I stay at your house tonight?” she asks again. 

“I already made your bed up, honey,” Howard says. “There’s no need for you to go out into the cold again.”

“Ok,” she repeats, crossing her arms over her chest, “but I’ll see you tomorrow, right James?”

“Absolutely,” you say, ruffling her hair. 

Lisa walks you out to the porch when you go. “You good to drive?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” you say. She’s holding herself stiff and brittle in the cold. “You ok?”

Now it is Lisa whose face is in her hands, whose body is trembling a little. You want to reach for her and repay the kindness of her gentle touch, but your body knows no gentleness tonight. 

When she raises her face her cheeks are dry. “I don’t know what the right thing to do is here,” she says. “Just the scene of that fight alone would be reason enough for CPS to come in there, and I know Mark, the Sheriff, he’s been looking for a reason to put Jason and Les away for a while now. They’d probably have a case against Mare, too, though.” Those kids would be in the system in an instant.” She runs her fingers over the wood railing. “She isn’t a bad girl, Mare. She loves those kids something fierce, but she just doesn’t think things through sometimes.”

You nod. “It’s real hard to think things through when you feel like you’ve got no control over anything, and it’s real hard to feel like you’ve got any control when you’re running scared all the time.” 

You don’t know what the right thing to do is either. Steve would know, you think for the second time that night. He always knows what the right thing to do is. “She’s doing the best she can,” you say. 

“I guess we are too,” Lisa smiles wryly. “I guess there’s nothing to do but make the best of a bad situation. You keep an eye out on Willow. I’ll check in on Mare more often and tell Mark to keep an eye on Les and Jason.”

“Alright,” you say, making to leave. “Thank you, Lisa.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies. “It takes a village, right?”

You’ve never heard that idiom, but you get the gist of it. “Right.” 

“James,” she calls as you’re opening the truck door, “I almost forgot- you’re not Jewish, are you?”

“No,” you frown. You grew up as Catholic as the Pope.

“Come for Christmas?”

“Don’t make assumptions,” you joke. “I could be Muslim, or Buddhist, or an atheist.” Actually you are an atheist.

She opens her mouth and closes it. “I grew up Catholic,” you laugh, “but I wouldn’t feel right intruding on your holiday, I ain’t very good with people I don’t know.” 

“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” she says, “but we’d be happy to have you, even if you come for just a little bit.”

“Alright,” you answer, “I’ll have a think on it.”

“Good. Good night, James.”

“Good night, Lisa.” You slide into your truck and turn towards home. 

There will be no sleep for you tonight. You stumble out of the truck, and head straight for Poppy. You throw her halter over her head and ride out, bareback, riding her hard, into exhaustion, until the eastern sky is brightening. 

Somehow sleep comes to you on the hard barn floor anyway. You dream.

In your dream you are in the orphanage, small bodies strewn before you. You have no sense of smell in dreams, but you know that it should smell. You should be retching with it. Blood soaks through your boots. Your tac vest is tight around your chest. Your left arm is flesh. Your left arm is metal. It is your father’s pocket watch, the one you lost somewhere in a cell in Azzano, that ticks your pocket. The Steve you knew in Europe stands across the room before you, suffused in light. He is Captain America, shield held lightly on his arm. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” you ask him. 

“Absolutely,” he says. 

You wake, your body trembling with cold. Pilot whines and noses at you. 

“I’m alright,” you tell him, sitting up. “I’m alright.” 

You stagger into the house, stripping your damp clothing as you go, tripping up the stairs to the bath. You turn the water as hot as it can go, and get in before the tub is filled. 

“Steve.” Your teeth chatter, your body trembles, disturbing the water as it flows around you. “Steve.”

He’s not here, he’s never been here, he’s somewhere far away- maybe standing in a kitchen in Brooklyn, the morning sun illuminating his body; maybe he is in the depths of some South Asian country, his tall broad shoulders and golden hair, marking him an easy target. 

The weight of his gaze is on you still, the way he was in your dream. His eyes were so kind. “Steve,” you call again, as if your own voice could conjure him to you. 

The water is at the top of your knees now. You turn off the faucet, sink down into the scalding water and weep. 

The next day you start on the bed. You’ve read all the books and watched all the videos. The plans are drawn up. The only thing left to do is to build it. It’s more frustrating and more intricate than you anticipated and you almost give up more times than you want to admit. But you like this corner room, with its south and east windows. With or without Willow’s permission, you will paint it a light blue with cream trim. You have your eye on a wood armoire you saw in Chatham, and you’ve got some sense of what sort of bedside tables you want, but first you need to build a bed. 

 

Hearing comes first. Something nearby is whining, high and terrified. Pilot. No, no, no, no. You have hurt Pilot. No. Your breath comes in a gasp. Pilot. He is- he is standing on your arm, licking at your face. You reach for your dog blindly, patting him down. He is whole and unhurt. The high whining noise comes from yourself. “Thank god,” you mutter, “thank god.” 

The darkness takes you again. 

Something is pulling on your arm. Someone-small hands- are tugging at you, urging you up. “No, Stevie,” you bat them away. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” they say, “how are you so heavy?” 

You resist the urge to laugh. It’s all vibranium from my shoulder down that’s how I’m so heavy, you want to say. You groan instead. 

“Come on,” Willow says, “sit up, James.”

You push yourself up into a sitting position, blinking. You are on the kitchen floor, crockery and kitchen utensils shattered around you. The ceramic insert of your crock pot lies in pieces at your feet. Distantly you notice that a shard of it has embedded itself in your bicep. It is still bleeding sluggishly. Distantly you notice that T'Challa’s hand is sitting in a pool of your own vomit. Everything hurts. Everything feels very far- you are yourself through a screen door. You pull the ceramic shard out of your skin. Willow presses a cold glass into your hands. “Don’t drink that yet,” she warns you, “just hold it for a minute.” 

You press the cool glass to your cheek and let it rest there for the space of 30 breaths. 

“Ok,” Willow says, “now have a drink.” 

The water irritates your inflamed throat- you must have been screaming- but the cold trails down your esophagus, into your innards. This is your own body. Your head lolls against the cabinet doors. You jimmy yourself up by your elbows to sit a bit straighter. Cleaning the vomit out of the gaps in the servos is going to been a pain in the ass. 

Willow stomps in and out of the room, gathering the broom and dust shovel and the rag and the bottle of bleach you keep under the bathroom sink. 

“Willow,” you protest, “you don’t gotta-”

She fixes you with a pointed glare. “Pilot,” she orders, “go sit on his knees, make sure he doesn’t get up.” Pilot, damn the dog, does as he’s told. 

She nudges your feet a little to get at the vomit, but otherwise you just sit and watch her clean up the mess that you don’t remember making. When she’s done she stands in front of you frowning. 

“You gonna be ok by yourself for a bit?” she asks.

You laugh. This isn’t first time you’ve woken up bleeding in a pool of your own vomit- it’s just the first time in a long while. “Yeah, kid,” you say, pushing your hair out of your face, “I’ll be fine.”

“Good. I’ll be back.” 

Time passes funny. You hoist yourself to your feet, wash your hands and face. It is thirty excruciating steps to the living room. Blink. You are on the couch. Blink. A book slides through your fingers. Blink. Were you sleeping? The old clock in the hallway ticks a metronome. How long has Willow been gone? It could be an hour, it could be five minutes. 

Willow’s bike creaks familiarly as she comes up the drive. She needs to oil her chains. You’ll do that tomorrow. The front door opens, slams shut. The smell of greasy meat fills the air and your stomach roils in nauseous hunger. 

“There you are,” she says. She’s holding two greasy McDonald bags in her hands.

“You biked out all the way to McDonalds?” It’s about 3 miles, round-trip.

She shrugs and plops herself down on the couch next to you. “I figured we could both use crappy burgers right now.”

You unwrap the burger with shaking hands. Willow is watching you critically as you take your first bite, the fat and sauces from her own burger dripping down her arms. The lukewarm burger is the best and worst thing you have ever tasted. 

“Well?”

You bump your knee against hers gently. “It’s pretty good,” you say. “Thank you, Willow.”

She blushes. “No problem.”

You eat in silence for a while. “Hey,” you say, “listen to me. This is important, Willow.”

She puts her burger down. “What?”

“If you ever see me like that again, or if you see me just blank, not myself somehow-”

“Kick you in the balls?” she says brightly.

“No!” Oh God, that would be a disaster. “No. Do not under any circumstances try to kick me in the balls. Willow, I’m not joking here. This is serious. If you see me like that, or if you see any people you don’t recognize here on the farm, no matter how innocuous they may seem, do not engage. Do you understand? If you can get away without being seen, do it. Be quick and quiet and just go. If I see you, or they see you, go low and still, like a rabbit- you’ve seen a rabbit when they’re scared, yes?”

“Yes?” 

“Like that. Then you go and get Lisa and Howard and you tell them to get whatever it is they use on their animals- I know Howard’s got a good rifle locked up in his safe, and you tell them to come and put me down, ok?”

“No,” she says. “I won’t do that. That’s stupid.”

“Willow, this isn’t a game and it isn’t negotiable. It’s dangerous. I’m dangerous.”

“You won’t hurt me,” she insists. “You won’t. You didn’t hurt me now. I’ve been reading about PTSD. I know what to do.”

“This isn’t PTSD, Willow. It’s either this or nothing at all. You have to promise me you’ll do this or else you can’t come back.” You should have set these terms from the outset. You are an open gun safe, a loaded pistol. You always have been.

She slams what remains of her burger onto the coffee table. “You’re such an asshole,” she snaps. 

“Yes,” you say, “I am. I am an asshole. But those are the conditions.”

“Fuck you,” she says, “I hate you,” and she’s up and out the door, slamming it behind her. 

You get up and clear the table, slipping the rest of Willow’s burger to Pilot. You pull on your jacket and go outside into the cold. The chickens need to be fed, and Mungbean’s stall is wanting some cleaning. You need to make sure that the catch bucket for the spout you’ve left dripping on the side of the house hasn’t overflowed. And if that’s not enough, there’s still the bed. There’s plenty to do. There’s always work. 

 

Mungbean is lipping at your hair when the buzzer rings. It isn’t Willow, it’s Lisa. You walk down the drive to greet her.

“Howard said he heard Pilot barking up a storm when he passed by last night and you weren’t answering your phone earlier. Is everything ok?” she asks, leaning out the window of her her pickup truck. 

“I’m fine,” you say, even though it must be evident to her that you- still bloodied and raw- are not fine at all. “I’m fine,” you say again, even though you want to beg her to do it right here and now. Go grab your rifle and put me down like the animal I am, put me down, “you know how dogs can get sometimes, going nuts for no reason.”

“Sure,” she says. “Dogs can be like that.” She looks out at your property, idling. “Howard is probably going to need an extra hand during the next few days. The picker engine has been out of sorts and he wants to get it back in shape before work picks up again. Are you around?”

“Where else would I be? I’d be happy to help.”

 

That night, you call Esihle for the first time since you arrived back in the states. She picks up right away. It is still early morning in Wakanda. 

“James,” she says. “What can I do for you?”

“Esihle,” you say, your voice cracking. Esihle I’ve been undone; I’ve been undone by a little girl, Esihle, I don’t know what to do. “Esihle-”

You tell her everything, from Poppy, to Howard and Lisa, to Willow. When you are done Esihle says, “I’m sorry this happened to you, James. It sounds very difficult.”

Then she says, “What are you doing tomorrow, James?”

You’re going to help Howard. “I’m going to help Howard,” you say. 

“Good,” she smiles. “You’ve become a good neighbor, I see.”

“I guess so,” you say. “But what should I do?” 

“Nothing,” Esihle replies. 

“Nothing?”

“Either Willow will come back to make her peace with you, or she won’t. I have a feeling she will, but in the meantime, your job is to take care of yourself. Sleep, if you can. Eat what you can. Ride that awful sounding horse of yours. That’s your job.”

“That sounds like a terrible job,” you joke, scrubbing at your face, “can I apply for a different one? I think I’d make a pretty qualified assassin.” 

Esihle laughs. “That’s been tried on you already, James. Killing didn’t suit you. Don’t you think it’s time for a change?”

The next day you go to help Howard. You feed your chickens and horses and dog. You muck out the stables. You work on the bed until you are tired enough to sleep. Then you wake before dawn and do the whole thing all over again.

 

She appears in your kitchen as if conjured a bit over a week later. Esihle was right. She always is. “I know who you are,” Willow says. “I figured it out after last week. I should have known when I saw your arm. You’ve done a lot of bad things.”

“Yes,” you say. “I have.”

“I’m still not afraid of you, though.” She lifts her chin.

“Are you sure about that, little girl?” you snarl. “I’m very dangerous.”

“I’m not just a little girl. You don’t know anything about -”

“You think I don’t know,” you cut her off, “I grew up just like you did. There was never enough money and too many children. We knew what it was to be hungry and to work hard and get nowhere. Things haven’t changed as much as you think they have. I know exactly who you are, Willow. You think you’re going to change something by doing all this? You think somehow that by attaching yourself to someone else, someone worse off than you, you can transcend the life you were born into? Well-”

“It doesn’t, work that way, right?” she sneers. “That’s what you’re going to tell me.”

“No,” you say. “Actually, I have no idea, Willow, no goddamn idea, but I am dangerous and the people coming after me are dangerous.”

“No one’s coming after you,” she mumbles.

“What?”

“Don’t you ever listen to the news?”

“No.”

“You’ve been cleared, James. No one’s looking for you anymore.”

You smile. T'Challa told you weeks ago that you were cleared. “That just means that official governments aren’t looking for me anymore. Not that no one’s looking for me.”

“You know what I think?” Willow asks. “I think I’ve got a pretty crappy life, and I think that no one in this town really cares except for you and Lisa, maybe and maybe Mrs. Caluneo at school. But fuck them and fuck that. I’m going to do stuff with my life. I’m going to go to college and I’m going to invent things and I’m going to be rich,” she pauses to take a breath. “I’ve been reading a lot about you this week-”

Oh, god. She has seen those files. No child should see that. No person should know what it takes to unmake a human being and turn them into a weapon. “Willow-” you start-but she talks over you.

“And you, you got a crappier life than I did, like way more. Lots of people did a lot of bad things to you. After that, nobody would blame you- nobody would expect that you would be, like, a person. But you are. You are a person. You’ve got a house and a dog and two horses and you take care of me and Howard and Lisa. So who cares if you got nightmares, or episodes or whatever? Fuck that. Fuck them. You can do whatever you want.”

She sounds so much like T'Challa. You never wanted his pity or charity, but he said, commanding in his soft, lilt. “It is not pity, it is anger. I am angry that there are people in the world who would do this to you. You have been used so much. Even the idea of you has been used- it was used to kill my father. It is enough. No more, I say. This is my revenge. You-living, healthy- are my revenge.”

“What do you want, James?” Willow says again.

You want to finish that damn bed. You want Steve. You want- you want to live outside history for a while- to be washed clean of the violence that has been forced upon you. 

But It isn’t as easy as that. You will never escape the Winter Soldier. You cannot unlearn the things you learned to do to survive. Willow’s too young to know that her life is not her own, not really. She will be shaped by the whims and whimsy of forces beyond her control, and all her selves will follow her whether she wants them too or not. 

You are bloody and violent. Your body knows this and in its knowing it bares your complicity to the light. You are made by the trail of the dead behind you. 

And anyway, you’re not really living, not yet. You’re just waiting for someone to turn off the nuclear bombs in your head. 

“It ain’t that simple,” you tell her.

“I know that,” she rolls her eyes. “Nobody said it was easy.”

“Now you sound like a friend of mine,” you say.

“You don’t have friends.”

“Sure I do,” you play at offended. 

“Oh, yeah, which friend said that?”

“My friend, T'Challa.”

“T'Challa, the King of Wakanda?” she gapes. “The Black Panther?”

“Sure,” you say.

“He’s your friend? What’s he like?”

“He gave me this arm, didn’t he? So yeah, I’d say he’s my friend. He’s-” you think of T'Challa. You owe him so much. “He’s nice,” you tell her. “He’s a good man.” 

“But he’s so cool,” she says, incredulous.

“Ok,” you laugh. “Can’t he be cool and be nice?”

“Whatever,” she says, “we’ve gotten off subject and that subject is you.”

“Come on upstairs,” you tell her. You’ve already capitulated to her, you might as well. 

She follows you up to your small attic room and looks around with interest in the fading daylight. You flick on the lights. 

“You’re not sleeping here anymore,” she says. “That’s good.”

“Yeah.” The bed isn’t finished, but the mattress on the floor is better than anything you’ve slept on in a long, long time. Maybe even ever. 

“What are these words?” One of the little slips of paper goes fluttering at her touch. “Lo-”

“Don’t!” you snap. “Don’t say anything-”

“Ok, ok.” she puts her hands up. 

“I’m sorry,” you sigh. “It’s just- do you want some crappy burgers? I’ll explain it to you, but we should eat.” 

“Sure,” she says. “Let’s do that.” 

The both of you sit on the porch looking out onto the pasture and your apple trees, the drive down to your gate. It’s cold and you’re wrapped in more layers than you can count, but you won’t contaminate your house with this.

“You know, um-you know Steve- Captain America, he broke through my conditioning a while back,” you can’t look at her as you speak, “and that was a good thing, obviously. But what you don’t know is that I still got triggers- those words you saw up there- they’re triggers. If a person- if I hear them in Russian, I just- I sort of go away and become-I become the Winter Soldier again.”

“James,” Willow whispers.

You still can’t look at her. “Anyway, T'Challa- um, his scientists, they said that the only way to get rid of the triggers is to sort of re-wire my brain, to create new memories, uh, sort of like scar tissue covering a wound. And the only way to do that is to just live, I guess, and hope that nobody triggers me in the meantime. Otherwise I’d still be back in the cryochamber so I can’t hurt anybody.”

“Who has the triggers?” Willow asks. 

“I don’t know,” you say and shudder. “We don’t know.”

“I guess now I understand why you told me what you told me,” she says. “That sounds really scary.” She lays her head on your arm.

“It really really is,” you agree. “Willow, I really am dangerous, and maybe it was a mistake- it was a mistake to let you come here at all.” 

“I’m not going to stop coming,” she says. “Even if you change the code, I’ll come under the fence. I’ll buzz and buzz and buzz and it will drive you nuts. You can’t stop me. Anyways, don’t be stupid, I bet those triggers are all gone. You’ve been here for years already.”

It’s only been 7 months- and anyway, you don’t tell her, it was two years in Bucharest, and it didn’t help you much, no matter what T'Challa and Esihle say. Neither you reaction time nor the fraction of the delay in the time it took Zemo to gain control of you matter. He still controlled you, in the end. You still have blood on your hands because of him. 

“Anyway,” she continues, “we’ll protect you if someone comes for you. This whole town will. People like you, you know.”

Their protection is no protection at all. Still the idea of them- Lisa, Howard, Rafa from the grocery store. Jim, who sells you your tools, Megan at the gas station- rising up in your defense warms something inside of you. 

“Well then,” you say, and you smile, “I guess I’m as safe as houses.”


	5. III. Steve

It is so very hot here in Wakanda. The air around you is like a wall. You strip down to nothing, just light cotton sleep pants and lay down on your bed to wait. The Dora Milaje will come now. Even T'Challa’s hospitality has limits. He’s never said anything, but you can read between the lines. Your therapy sessions are a condition for your stay here. He’s got no use for a malfunctioning weapon. 

You’ve been seeing Esihle for three months now and this is the first time you’ve walked out. Well more than walked out. You whipped the object closest at hand- one of the little flat lake stones from her miniature fountain-straight at the wall, shattering the glass of the framed print hanging behind her. Esihle flinched to your great satisfaction and reached down toward her purse, probably for the taser you knew she kept there, but you were gone before you could find out for certain.

So now you are waiting for T'Challa’s guard to come, for privileges to be revoked, to go back to the cryochamber, maybe. Steve would be so disappointed in you-but Steve doesn’t know you’re out of the cryochamber to begin with, so it doesn’t much matter anyway. 

Hours pass. You lay on your bed, shirtless, and restless with irritation, sweat dampening your hair and the bedspread beneath you. 

You just wanted her to stop saying that- she’d said it a million times- your body is your own. You’re sick and tired of that shit. You’re done. What does your body have to do with anything? You murdered a whole fucking lot of people. There’s no way to un-murder them- so.

Eventually, sick of waiting, you had slept, and when you woke T'Challa was at your door. 

“James,” he says, and you stand at attention. Pilot comes bounding into the room.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out. “I’ll pay for the damage.” It is a false promise. You both know you have no money.

“What damage?” he asks. 

So he doesn’t- this is not about Esihle. If it’s not that, then what? You swore you’d turn yourself into a weapon for him, but you don’t think you can. Not now. Not yet. “I don’t think I’m mission ready yet,” you say.

T'Challa shakes his head. “There is no mission, James.”

“Is it Steve? Is he ok?”

“James,” he says, “I am only here to see how you are doing. There is no mission, and your Captain is well, last I heard from him.”

“Ok,” you hesitate.

“James,” T'Challa says again. He presses his smooth hand to your cheek. “I do not want your loyalty. It is as distasteful to me as my pity would be to you. Should I call you to come and fight for me, I wish that you would come not out of guilt or misplaced loyalty but out of love.”

You take a step back. You would rather give him your loyalty. Loyalty is easy. Love is not. Pilot barks and presses himself against your legs. 

“So this is your Pilot,” T'Challa smiles. 

“Yes,” you reply.

“What a lovely dog,” he bends runs his hands down Pilot’s chest. “Come,” he says, “I will walk you and Pilot to your appointment.”

Someone had cleared the glass off the floor of Esihle’s office, but you can see now that the stone had not only broken the frame, but gone straight through the wall. You wonder what is on the other side. 

Esihle is, as always, sitting yellow-dressed in a her chair. “James,” she says warmly. “I’m glad you came.” 

It is hard to see her disapproval. You climb over the back of the couch and settle yourself on the floor to stare at the ceiling- high beams of light wood from some tree you cannot name. 

“You were very angry last time, weren’t you?” Esihle asks. “Would you like to talk about that?”

“Not particularly,” you grunt. 

“Ok,” she replies, “but I just want you to know that I was pleased that you were finally expressing your anger. Of course, I could have done without the broken glass all over my floor,” she says wryly, “but that is easily remedied.” 

You pull yourself up onto your knees and twist, hooking your chin over the back of the couch to look at her. She is completely in earnest. 

“You keep on saying,” you say as you slide back to the ground. “You keep on saying that my hand is mine, my body is mine, but if that’s the case, if this body is really mine and I have control over it, then I did it- I did all of it- all the terrible things the Winter Soldier did, I did. I murdered all those people. I helped Hydra grow. I fucking shot Steve. I did it, me. This body you’re always talking so much about, it killed and tortured and didn’t feel a thing. They told me that Steve was dead, and I just gave in- I let them do it- I let them turn me into a weapon. If this body is mine, I am the Winter Soldier.” 

“James,” she says, coming around the couch and sitting down on the floor next to you, “listen to me, this is very important. You are right to be angry, every bit your anger is valid. What was done to you is an anathema, an abomination. There is no amount of anger that is enough anger to encompass what was done to you. So be angry, James. Please, be angry. 

“But I need you to understand something. All the evil that the Winter Soldier was made to do, was done to you. They are not your murders and tortures. Do you understand, James?”

You nod because you cannot speak.

“Now as for the second thing- I know that you remember it as a sequence of events- they told you that Captain Rogers was dead and then you, as you said, gave in, but memory is fallible. Hydra kept meticulous records.” Her smile is more of a grimace. “I have those records, as you know and I reiterate my offer- you are always welcome to see them.”

You shake your head. There is nothing more in the world that you do not want so much as you do not want to see those records. You do not want to see yourself being dismantled and unpersoned. You experienced it a thousand times over- you are terrified of experiencing it again. 

“There was a good six months between the time they informed you of Captain Roger’s death and the time they made any headway on the Winter Soldier project.” Esihle continues. “In fact, when they told you, you were so incensed, you caused considerable damage- almost bit a man’s nose off, if I’m recalling correctly.”

You can taste the blood in your mouth, you can feel the give of the cartilage snapping and collapsing between your teeth- but that may not be a memory, or at least it may not be the correct memory. There is always the taste of blood in your mouth. 

“It was only when they progressed enough with their mind-wiping technology that they felt they had any control over you. They had to wipe away your very being in order for them to use your body to do evil. But now,” Esihle takes your hand and squeezes, “it is the 21st century, Hydra is destroyed,” You raise an eyebrow and she laughs. “Ok, Hydra is defeated. This hand belongs to you, this body belongs to you, this mind belongs to you, your name, James Buchanan Barnes, belongs to you. Now you’re alive and he’s alive, so what are you going to do about it?”


	6. Chapter 6

Sometimes the truth just ain't enough  
Or is it too much in times like this?  
Let's throw the truth away we'll find it in this kiss  
In your skin upon my skin in the beating of our hearts  
May the living let us in before the dead tear us apart  
-Worlds Apart, Bruce Springsteen

Now that she knows, Willow is full of questions. She wants every piece of information on the Avengers that you can give her. The truth is, there’s not much you can tell her. Your interaction with the group of people called the Avengers has been bloody, to say the least. That is not the type of information Willow is looking for and you categorically refuse to answer any and all questions about Steve. 

It is not that it is painful to speak of him. If anything, he haunts you. You walk through the house trying to see it as he would see and his spectre follows you. He would not like the couch, you think, nor the light yellow walls of the kitchen. The untended garden out back would make him shudder, and if he were designing the house he would be knocking down the remaining walls and pulling in the light with big bay windows and skylights. So his presence is not painful, no. It is a balm. He is here anyway, what would it hurt to speak of him?

You don’t speak of him because you can’t bear the thought of giving him to anyone else. He is yours and yours alone and not even Willow can have him. You are the only person left alive who truly knows him- you know his long artist’s fingers bloody and bruised at the knuckles, a feral grin on his sharp fox face. Not even Peggy knew that grin, you think. Only you. Only you - pulling yourself up by the rusted rails of the fire escape, slipping in through the window so old Mrs. Levinson can’t catch you. You are young and strong limbed and whole, alive for the joy of it.

He’s just coming in as well and you stand there for a minute staring at each other across the expanse of your one room apartment. His trench coat is open revealing his torn shirt and muddied pants. Blood still trickles from his nose and he’ll have a good black eye tomorrow morning. As for you- you’re not wearing a coat. Your shirt is done up wrong and you know you smell of sex and cigarettes. 

“You treat her right?” he asks.

“Sure thing, Pops,” you grin. “You right some wrongs, Stevie?”

“Sure thing, Gramps,” he replies.

His grin was a beautiful thing under all that blood.

You are the only person left alive who knows him standing shirtless in a field somewhere in France, the early morning limning him gold, an old god in an old county. Underneath the ruins of this old cathedral there are the ruins of a Roman temple. He is a god of war and this is his place. You watch the new muscles in his back shift as he stretches his arms above his head. The scent of lavender is in the air and you fall out of time and out of your very self, the animal panic in your gut since Azzano. The light is on everything there in that field, including you. 

He turns to you and smiles.

Eventually, Willow stops asking about him. It is a relief. 

February and March are godawful months, the sleet sinking into your bones and disturbing your sleep. You don’t want to be outside any more than you have to be, so you tend your animals in the early morning and then spend most of the rest of the day working on the bed. By late March it is pretty much done. The wood is stained, the frame is stable and now all you have to do is install the hardwood slats. You run your hand over the curve of the headboard. You made this, this tangible, physical thing; this soft thing meant for comfort. The wood moves where once it was alive. Esihle would say that’s a good metaphor. You think it’s a just a pretty good bed. 

 

“Was Captain America your boyfriend?”

You almost drop the mug you are wiping. Willow is seated at your kitchen table doing her math homework for a change. She’d been asking you questions about algebra that you couldn’t answer while you tried not to remember how to calculate a sniper’s angle, so you are taken by surprise. You had thought she was done with her questions. “Excuse me?” you ask. 

“Captain America,” Willow repeats, “was he your boyfriend?”

“No, Jesus, Willow, no. Where would you even get an idea like that? Steve loved Peggy very much.” 

You remember how he looked at her, the excited expectation on his face. You knew she was important to him from the start. You went and flirted with her anyway, because it seemed the thing to do. You were feeling ugly and tired and cruel. It wasn’t fair that the war had gone and turned him into this glowing bright thing, a physical manifestation of himself, but had turned you into something twisted. You felt a monster long before you became the Winter Soldier. And anyway, she would eat him alive, a girl like that in a dress like that. 

Oh, but you were wrong, you were wrong about everything- a girl like that, in a dress like that- all his planets just swung out of orbit and into hers. He loved her. She loved him. 

You liked her in the end if only for the fact that she always called you Sergeant. She never pretended that you were more to each other than you were. You liked her because you had no choice- you and she both knew you weren’t coming back from this war, and you needed somebody around to make sure Steve wouldn’t tilt off his axis. 

She failed at that. You would hate her for it, but she paid the price, and anyways, she’s dead. She loved him and she had to live her long life without him. It is the only solace you have, an obscene irony in all this, you loved him, but at least you never had to live as a creature of your own mind in a world where he did not exist.

“Nobody would care if you were,” Willow continues as if you hadn’t said a thing. “You could even get married now, you know. It’s legal everywhere.” 

You know. It is one joy of this new century, to have a legally protected word for yourself- bisexual. You try it out on your tongue- even if you also know that people would care, strongly and emphatically. That’s neither here nor there, though, since you’ve no intention of marrying Steve, or anyone for that matter. 

“Willow-” you say, exasperated. 

“It’s just-” she bursts out, “Everyone talks about Peggy Carter like she was just Steve Rogers’s girlfriend, but like, she did a lot of important stuff. She founded SHIELD and all they can talk about is Captain America. It isn’t fair.” 

“You’re right,” you say. “It isn’t fair. Peggy was a fuck-you kind of lady and Steve loved her very much,” you repeat. 

“Ok,” she says, mollified for the moment. “What about you? Did you have someone you loved very much?” 

You think about it for a minute. You remember-

“Why Bucky Barnes, you are a gentleman after all,” she- you forgot her name, you forgot all names, but she had had red hair and freckles on her shoulders- said as you folded the stocking you had just removed, baring her legs, and laid them carefully on the chair next to her bed. 

You pulled her close and kissed your way up the curve of her shoulder, basking in her scent. How good it was to have body that could do this. How good it was to make her shudder and moan. “I got sisters,” you smiled against her neck, “I know how much those things cost.” 

“I think I dated a lot,” you tell Willow, “but I don’t think there was anyone special. If there was, I’ve forgotten. There’s a lot I don’t remember.”

“Well that’s pretty sad,” Willow says.

“Is it?” You don’t think it is sadder than any of the other things you have forgotten.

“Yeah. You used to be a total player and now you live like a hermit.”

“Hey now,” you protest, “don’t go smearing my good name. I was a gentleman through and through.”

You treat her right?

It should be a relief, to know that at your core you were once someone who people thought of as good and that your body was a thing that could pleasure and feel pleasure, but instead it’s just an ache, just one more thing you lost, never to regain.

 

Your apple trees are in bloom when they bring him to you bloody, bruised and almost unconscious. You’re settling a new lilac bush in its place under your bedroom window when the gate buzzes. You break out into a run when you hear who it is.

You wrench the back passenger doors open even before Natasha has rolled to a stop in front of the house. Sam half drags him from the car, grunting. His face. His face is mottled and bruised, blood down the sides of it, his left eye swollen shut. 

“Jesus,” you whisper, pushing Sam out of the way, and pulling him the rest of the way out. Steve staggers to his feet. 

“Bucky!” he slurs, patting clumsily at your face. “My pal, my buddy, my Bucky.” 

“Yes, your Bucky,” you agree, pushing his hands away, “Steve, what-” 

“Oh,” he says, pointing. Willow’s standing dirt-streaked behind you, a pitchfork braced in her hands like a weapon. “-it’s a little girl, Buck. Bucky did you-”-and then he’s out, leaving you stumbling under the weight of an unconscious super-soldier.

“What- What is he on?” you demand. 

“Elephant tranqs,” Natasha answers.

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s the only thing that’ll stick,” she shrugs. 

Steve’s all dead weight, slipping through your arms. “Little help?” you croak to Wilson.

“Oh, no,” Wilson says, hefting Steve’s shield onto his arm. “I’ve done my share of dragging his ass around. It’s your turn now, Barnes,” and he walks right past you up the porch stairs and into your house. 

“Hey,” you yell, “you can’t just-” you drag Steve up the stairs after him- Natasha’s strong, but the height difference makes her more of a hinderance than a help. 

“Nice place you got here,” Wilson says when you clear the door. “Good kitchen. Real wood floors. Much better than a Wakandan cryochamber.”

“Sam.” Natasha says. 

You don’t dignify him with a response. You lay Steve down on the couch gently and start loosening his stupid suit and tac gear. 

All that jostling tore open the stitched wound on his shoulder. He’s bleeding through his t-shirt underneath all his layers. 

“Willow,” you say, “go get the first aid kit-” but Willow is gone. She slipped away when you were bringing Steve into the house. “Natasha,” you say instead, “there’s a first aid kit under the sink in the upstairs bathroom. Could you get it for me, please.”

“James,” Natasha says, when she reappears, kit in hand. “He’s healing. He’s going to be fine.” 

“What happened?” you croak. “Why’d you bring him to me?” If he’s not dying, why’d you bring him to me?

Natasha sighs. 

“Cleveland was a shitshow,” Wilson says, wiping his hands on his mud-crusted pants. “It was a Asgardian rebel faction, and those guys- those guys are fast, man. Fast and deadly. And he just goes throwing himself in there. You know how he is.” 

You nod. No, no, don’t do it, Stevie. Don’t do it. 

“We managed to pin ‘em down just as Thor arrived to take care of things, but Steve got hit pretty bad and there was a whole lot of damage to civilian property and then this horde of reporters showed up and we just- we had to get him out of there to somewhere where they wouldn’t think to look so he could heal.”

“I’m not going to lie,” Natasha says, “it looked pretty bad for a while.” She brushes a strand of Steve’s hair off of his sweaty forehead. “He’s ok now though. We warded off the shock and his healing has kicked in. Anyways he was asking for you.”

You close your eyes. Steve is here. Steve is here and hurt, and-it’s fine. It’s fine. He’s healing. You can see it with your own eyes. What’s been done is done. There’s no use scrambling your head about it. 

You open your eyes. Wilson and Natasha look terrible- dirty and war weary- the type of tired that settles in your bones and doesn’t ever feel like it will go away. You know it well. It’s not like you don’t have beds to put them in.

“Ok,” you say. “Ok. Why don’t the two of you go clean up and get some rest? There are clean towels in the in the bathroom. One of you can take the guest bedroom, and there’s a fold up cot in the studio.”

Wilson looks like he’s going to say something smart, but Natasha just smiles. “Thanks,” she says, “that would be great. Sam, why don’t you take first shower?”

“You trying to tell me I smell, Romanoff?” Sam snarks.

“You both smell,” you grumble. “Get out of here and go shower.” 

You wait until you hear boots tromping up the stairs and then go back to tending Steve. You don’t want to jostle him too much, but you manage to get a pair of sweatpants on him. He groans, but does not wake. You’re not going to risk the stitches you just stitched by lifting his arms, so instead you cover him with a sweatshirt and every blanket you own that will not be used for your guests.

Then you go to call Lisa to see if she has extra linens to lend you. 

Natasha watches you as you talk to Howard. She’s somehow found your mugs and your tea and is sitting serenely at your table drinking chamomile as if she is not literally covered in grime and blood. 

“Tell me,” you demand when you’ve gotten off the phone. You’ve seen, but you want to be sure you haven’t missed anything.

“A gut shot, through and through,” she reports. “It’s already begun to heal. Two broken ribs on his left side, and one major laceration on his upper right shoulder. Other than that bruising and minor lacerations on his face, and well, everywhere.”

“Concussion?” 

“Thankfully, no.”

“That’s a minor miracle.” 

“It sure is,” she agrees. “He’ll be fine,” she says again. “He’s healed worse.”

You sigh.

“James,” Natasha says. “I’m sorry for betraying your trust.”

Technically, it is her house. It was bought with her money. She would, of course, say that the money is yours, or if you were being pedantic, the money belongs to the heirs of Johann Schmidt, but she stole it and gave it to you, so now it is yours.

She had appeared one day in Wakanda near the end, when you were already getting restless. “Comrade,” she said, smiling only with her eyes, “this is for you.” 

“Steve can’t know,” you replied and she nodded. 

“I’m good at secrets.” You took the small memory drive from her and turned it over in your hands. “Think of it as reparations,” she said. “You deserve it.”

How could she betray your trust? You gave her the coordinates for a reason.

“Natasha, no,” you say. “You didn’t. You couldn’t. You made the right call.” 

She smiles. “You look like you’re doing really well here. I’m glad.” 

You shrug. “I guess.” You do not think you could do what she does. You are too weak to throw yourself into the fray again. “I’m not saving the world, but I guess I’m doing ok.”

“There’s no one way to do this,” Natasha says.“Everybody’s got to find their own way to balance their books. No one way is better than the other. You’ve got a really nice house here. Neighbors. A community. Looks like you’ve even adopted a kid.” 

“I didn’t adopt her,” you insist. “She just comes around to help.”

“Ok,” she laughs, “but the point still stands.”

You wish she were right. You wish there were parity between her penance and yours, but there isn’t. It doesn’t surprise you. In your experience, women are almost always able to do the things men can’t. 

The water pipes go quiet. Wilson has finished taking the world’s longest shower. “You ought to go shower before Wilson decides he’s getting back in and uses up all the hot water,” you tell her. 

“You’re right,” she says, grimacing as she gets up. “I do feel kind of disgusting.” 

“Natasha,” you say as she passes, “thank you. Thank you for this; for everything.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies, and then slips out out of the room.

You wash her mug and the few dishes Willow left in your sink earlier. You go to check on Steve. He’s still out, mouth hanging open and snoring a little, but he doesn’t feel feverish and his pulse beats a strong, even rhythm. 

You make yourself your own cup of tea, and sit down on the front porch to breathe. It is only now dusk. It has been less than two hours. After all this time, he is here and he needs you. You had forgotten what his sheer presence does to you. You are like a migratory bird, returning to him always, even if you have not exactly gone anywhere.

Wilson sits down next to you. He smells like your own soap and shampoo. It’s disconcerting. 

“Man,” he says, “I am so furious with you right now. I can barely even talk to you.”

You look at him, a man hale and hearty, in possession of all his limbs, grounded in himself. He has left his terrors behind, somehow, while you-- . Wilson is more than qualified to stand at Steve’s six, where you should be. You hate him, you hate him, you hate him. You would burn down the world for him and resent that. 

“I’m the only person in the world who could hurt Steve and he would just let me,” you tell him, “I’m not going to do that again.”

He looks at you for a long while. “You know,” he says, “there’s more than one way to hurt a person.” 

“Yeah,” you reply. “I’m beginning to see that.” 

Pilot huffs and lays his head down on your lap with a sigh. Sam leans over to scratch his head. “You go on and go to sleep,” you tell him. “I got this.”

You fall asleep on the floor that night still half leaning on the couch, Steve’s hand clasped in yours. Maybe once you slept like this before, when he he was smaller and you were young. Even if you can’t remember it, it is not unfamiliar. 

“Buck?” he says hoarsely, stirring in the night. The house is still dark around you.

“Yes,” you say, “I’m here. I’m here.”

“Thought I was dreaming.”

“No.”

“Sam and Natasha,” he turns his head, but doesn’t quite manage to pull himself up. 

“Hey, hey, don’t try and get up. Sam and Natasha are fine. They’re sleeping upstairs.”

“Ok,” he murmurs, eyelids fluttering shut. “There was- there was also a girl-”

“Yes, that was Willow. I hired her to help me out a bit. She’s gone home now. She’s here a lot, her family’s not great.”

“Ok,” he says again. 

“Don’t worry,” you tell him, “I haven’t all of a sudden got kids you don’t know about.” 

That gets half a grin. “Buck-” he says again, reaching for your hand.

“Yes?” you whisper, taking it. He doesn’t answer. He’s slipped back into sleep, and eventually so do you.

 

He finds you in the barn the next morning. You’ve been currying Poppy for a half an hour now, and she’s as shined and polished as she’s ever going to get. She’s preening a bit under all the attention, even as she still tries nip at you as you pass. 

Steve hobbles in wearing the sweatpants you put on him last night and the sweatshirt you laid over his torso. Putting it on must have been a bitch. His bare feet are tucked into his unlaced boots. On anyone else it would look ridiculous, but Steve looks imposing no matter what he’s wearing. It was always that way. There’s a fire lit in him that shines through any body of his. 

“I wish you’d stop running from me,” he sighs, leaning against Poppy’s stall. 

You put down the brush. “I ain’t running,” you reply.

He lifts his eyebrows.

“What, tending my animals counts as running now? Is that how it is?”

“Buck,” he says, “you know that’s-” He scrubs his hands over his face-half frustrated and half hiding from your glare. “That’s a real nice horse you got there,” he changes tack. “Where’d you learn to ride?”

“I don’t know,” you answer, unclipping the cross-ties. It’s a stupid skill for an assassin to have. And yet, you have it and you wouldn’t give it up for anything.

“What’s her name?” He shuffles closer and lifts a hand to pat her nose.

“Don’t,” you snap, turning Poppy sharply so that he has to scramble back. “She bites.” You lead her into her stall, shutting the gate behind you. “She ain’t good with strangers.” Or with anyone, for that case.

Steve makes a noise like you punched him

“Jesus, Rogers,” you say. “She’s just a dumb horse. You don’t gotta take things so personally. Anyway, I ain’t running. I promise I’m not. I just needed to get my head in order.”

“Bucky-” he says. 

“I hurt you, Steve,” you say. “I hurt you and I figured if I couldn’t have the cryochamber this was the only way to make sure I wasn’t going to do it again. I can’t risk hurting you.”

“But you’d risk these people? This town? Bucky, you know what would happen if-”

“Yes,” you cut him off. “I would. I did. I would rather risk them than you. I am not a good person, Steve. I have never been a good person.” 

All the goodness in your life has been him and him alone. You followed him around like a lost puppy for all those years in the hope that some of his goodness would rub off on you. It didn’t, of course. Goodness doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to be good on your own. 

He staring at you wide eyed, trembling faintly. “Bullshit. That’s bullshit,” he spits out.

“You don’t get to tell me what I am or what I’m not, Steve.” you shoot back. “You gave up your shield for me, a part of yourself, how could I-”

“That was my choice!” he roars and your animals panic. Poppy goes kicking at the walls and even steady Mungbean stamps his feet, snorting. From afar you can hear Pilot barking from inside the house. “I chose to do that,” he says again, quieter. 

You reach into Mung’s stall and put a calming hand on his neck. “Easy there, boy,” you whisper, “easy.” He blows out a breath and moves so that he can chew on your hair the way he likes to.

“Howard made me the shield,” Steve says. “It isn’t a part of me. It never was.”

“You know what I mean, Steve.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I am and what I’m not, Buck,” he shoots back.

“Well, this was my choice,” you tell Steve. “Mine. Anyway,” you study your feet. “I was always planning on finding you eventually. I thought, when my brain was better, I thought we could go look for that book together. And then, if it worked-” you can’t finish that thought to the places you want it to go. “You know how nowadays,” you say instead, “all these new houses are so quiet? This one, it makes noise like back in Brooklyn, the wind coming through the cracks in the windowpanes. I thought you would like this house,” you whisper.

He’s watching you with those eyes, those kind, kind eyes, and you have to look away.

“I wanted to,” you shrug, “but then Willow-she’s-”

“I know who she is, you told me last night.”

“I can’t believe you remember that. You were half asleep.”

I remember everything you say,” he says.

“Ok,” you allow, “anyway, she came along, and I couldn’t leave her;” not with Les and Douchebag Jason around. 

He’s smiling now. “Ok,” he says, “ok.” He straightens and groans. “Help me back into the house, Buck.I got something to show you.”

He throws his arm over your shoulder. The scent of him is blood and sweat and Brooklyn. “You know, you haven’t changed one bit, Buck,” he grins. “You still gotta take care of that little kid who can’t back down from a fight.”

“Hey now,” you reply, “Willow’s a lot smarter than you ever were. She knows exactly when to back down from a fight.”

“She seems like quite a kid. I’d like to meet her proper.”

“She is,” you say. “You will.”

By the time you get back to the house he is white-faced and sweating. “Hey, hey,” you say, as he reaches down, wincing, to grab the tac vest you unceremoniously threw on the floor the night before. “I got it. You sit down.” 

He sits, breathing heavily as you hold up the protective vest. “In the inner pocket,” he says. “It’s in the inner pocket.”

You turn the vest inside out and unzip the top inner pocket. It sits top-left- just where his heart would be. 

“Steve,” you whisper. A small red book with with a black star on its cover sits in your shaking hands. It is your user’s manual. The book of your unmaking, and now, possibly, your making. “How?” 

“It was my condition for coming back.”

“Who?”

“Ross had it. I don’t know what he meant to do with it, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”

You’re trembling, nausea rising up into your throat.

“We don’t have to use it now,” Steve says, gently touching your hand. “If you’re not ready, we can wait. Take as long as you need. No one else is going to get their hands on it.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “No. I want- Let’s do this now. Soon.” You can’t imagine a life without the triggers in your head. You can’t imagine it, but oh, how you want it. You want it.

“Ok,” Steve says. “If you’re sure.”

You laugh. “I’m not. I’ll never be sure. But I gotta try some time. I can’t- I can’t live like this anymore.”

“Ok,” he says again. 

“Keep this,” you tell him, giving him the book. Just having it in your hands- you’re surprised Pilot hasn’t bounded into the room already, ears alert, ready to keep you from slipping away, as he does. “I know it will be safe with you.” 

It disappears into his big palms. You stand. It is quiet now. Sam and Natasha drove out to Chatham to do some errands. Willow won’t show up for another few hours. There are always chores to be done, but you might as well get a start on supper. You don’t want to leave Steve alone in the house if you can help it. 

You’ve got a side of beef defrosting in the fridge, some onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes. Some celery would be nice, but you’re out. It’s not much work to put up a stew in your new crock pot, but Steve insists on helping anyway, chopping onions seated at your kitchen table. He’s terrible at it, always was. The onions he proudly thrusts toward you are a mess of shapes and sizes, but what does that matter? It’s just stew. 

Then there’s no more work to be done. You’ve washed the dishes, wiped down the counter and would start rearranging the cupboards if it didn’t look too much like you were looking for an excuse to keep busy, which you are absolutely not doing, Esihle. 

“Coffee?” you ask him, throwing the rag into the sink.

“You too,” he answers. “That’s enough, Bucky, you’ve done enough. Come, sit down and have coffee too.”

When you sit, he takes your hand, and the grief of it all- that you and he are sitting in your kitchen here in a changed world, your pasts washed away, unreachable - all that was lost to you, all that was taken from you- not your arm, or your own self, but Brooklyn-the awful din of it, buildings close and tight, you could hear everything and all things through the open windows, down the alleyways; the scent of garbage after the rain, the way sometimes, when the wind was right, you could smell the ocean; your mother’s hair coming down in tendrils over her forehead, your father’s steady footsteps in the hall, coming home late, unable to keep the Irish out of voice, calling, Darling, Darling, all your sisters’ joys and sorrows, a lived in world without you in it- hits you then. He sits in your kitchen and you are full of grief. 

You want to ask him, he who has lived here longer than you have, now that you are on the cusp of living yourself- you want to ask him how he does it. How do does he live in this future neither of you asked for?

You wipe at your eyes. “I’m scared, Stevie,” you say. 

“I know,” he says, and tightens his grasp. “Me too.”

Later, when Willow finally appears, late as she never is, he stands to greet her. “Hello, Willow,” he says holding out his hand, “it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Willow eyes you, frowning, but she takes Steve’s offered hand. Her own hand is tiny in his palm. “Hello, Mr.- Captain- Sir.” 

“It’s just Steve,” he smiles.

“Ok,” she says in a small voice.

“Thank you for taking care of Bucky. I know he can be stubborn sometimes.”

You roll your eyes, but Willow sighs, “Yeah, he can be a pain in the ass. But he’s ok, I guess.” 

Steve laughs.

“Alright,” you grumble, “that’s enough. Come on, Willow. We’ve got work to do.”

“Let me help.” Steve takes an eager step forward. 

“Oh, no you don’t,” you say. “See Willow, this is why I need you. Nat and Sam are going to be busy sitting on him so that he can’t get up and do stupid things, and anyway, those city kids wouldn’t know the horse feed from the chicken shit.”

“Hey,” Natasha says, coming into the room. “I heard that. I’ll have you know I’ve both fed horses and shoveled chicken shit in my day, just like you, Barnes. Wilson, on the other hand-” she makes a face.

“Sit on him if you need to,” you tell her. 

“My pleasure,” she says, grinning. 

“Captain Rogers- Steve- is different than I thought he would be,” Willow says as she follows you down the porch steps.

“Ok,” you say. “I’m not really sure what you were expecting.”

“He’s just, he’s just like a...guy.” 

“Of course he is.”

“But he’s got all these superpowers.”

“So do I,” you reply. 

She rolls her eyes, “Yeah, but you’re you. And he’s, he’s Captain America.”

You tousle her hair. “I’m going to try to not take that as an insult, kid,” you say. “Come on now, let’s get to work.”

By Sunday you are crawling out of your skin. You hadn’t realized how much you crave your own solitude until you are without it. Sam has taken to spending his time repairing and testing out his wings. He shoots up into the sky whooping and hollering and scaring the animals. Pilot takes off running after him, barking in joy. It is the only reason you have not made Wilson stop.

Natasha, for her part, has taken it upon herself to update your home security system. You wouldn’t be surprised if your apple shoot lasers by the time she’s done. And Steve-

Now that he can walk again, Steve has taken to following you around and trying to help as you as you go about your day. It’s beginning to drive you crazy. 

“Alright,” you say, “I’m going for a grocery run. No, Steve, you can’t come with me. Does anyone have any special requests?”

Natasha looks up from whatever she’s doing on her tablet. “Cranberry juice would be nice,” she says. “Sam likes licorice.”

“I’m good with anything. You know that.” Steve says. “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“I’m sure.”

The truck is such blissful silence. You could drive forever, but you don’t. You really are running low on food, so you pull into Rafa’s grocery and steel yourself for more human contact.

“I’m leaving him. You’ve got to take her.” Mare blocks your way in the narrow dry goods aisle. You’re not doing your best today, you realize now that you can think again. Your head is full of Steve and the little red book in his possession. It took you a full three minutes to realize that she was shadowing you through the aisles.

“Excuse me?” you say. 

“Willow,” she grabs at your sleeve and you hiss. “You’ve got to take her.”

“Listen,” you say, peeling her fingers off your camouflaged metal arm as gently as you can muster, “this isn’t the place. Why don’t you meet me outside when I’m done. We’ll talk about it there.”

“Esta todo bien?” Rafa interrupts from behind the counter. “¿Te está molestando?”

“No, Rafa,” you reply. “Todo esta bien. Gracias.” 

You wonder, not for the first time, about this town. It doesn’t seem right that they should favor a stranger for the sake of some imagined sacrifice over one of their own. 

“I’ll meet you outside,” you tell Mare. “Ok?”

“Ok,” she nods. 

It’s drizzling softly when you exit the store, so you open up the passenger side door of the truck and let Mare take shelter there as you load your bags into the back.

“Ok,” you say. “Now start from the beginning.”

She pulls her damp hair out of her face, and straightens her back. “I”m leaving Les and I’m leaving this town,” she announces. 

“Where are you going?”

“South Carolina. Charleston. My cousin says she’s got a job for me there. It’s even got benefits.”

“That’s great, Mare,” you say. “But what’s this about Willow?”

“My son Jason has got some bad friends here. I don’t want Taylor to get mixed up in all that too. It’s no good for him here or for the babies. I think it will be better in South Carolina. But Willow, she’s doing real good here. You and Lisa take good care of her, so you should take her. It’ll be best for her.”

You settle the bottle of cranberry juice gently on its side. Lord, this is just what you need today. “Have you talked to Willow about this?”

Mare shrugs. “Didn’t see the point until it was all settled.”

“Jesus,” you mutter, rubbing at your forehead. “Listen,” you say, “first thing you gotta do, is you gotta talk to Willow. I don’t think- she loves you guys an awful lot. She’ll probably want to go with you.”

“Nu uh,” Mare says. “I won’t let her. She’s gotta do what’s best for her.”

“Second of all,” you say, “you can’t- even if Willow agreed, and I agreed, I wouldn’t- you can’t take people from other people. Willow will always be your daughter. You know that, right?” That is a lie, of course. You were taken from your mother and she was taken from you. You will never be her son again.

Mare rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.” 

“I’m not saying yes,” you say. There are too many variables. You have no idea who you’re going to be come Tuesday. You have no idea what Willow herself wants. “Talk to Willow and then we can start this discussion, ok?”

“Ok,” she frowns.

“You need a ride anywhere?” You slide into the front seat and start the engine.

“Nah,” she says, hopping down onto the asphalt. “Was so busy talking to you, I forgot to do my own shopping. I’ll talk to you later, James.” 

“Sure thing,” you say. 

 

Steve’s up and dressed and holding the red book when you come in from your morning chores. You’d spent more time than necessary on them. This may be your last chance- your last stolen moment to stand under your apple trees and look up into the blossoming branches at the nesting robins. This may be your last chance to set your hand on Poppy’s neck and talk to your chickens as you gather eggs. 

It is possible that Steve has slept as little as you have. Still, he’s standing tall and straight-backed. His hurts have healed. 

“Morning,” he says. “You sleep ok?” 

“Sure,” you lie. “You?”

“Fine,” he lies in return. “So it’s the big day. You ready?”

“No,” you snort, shucking off your jacket and laying it over the back of a chair. “Listen,” you say, and he nods, eyes fixed on your face. “If something happens today-”

“Buck-” he says.

“No,” you say sharply. “Let me say this- if something goes wrong-”

“If something goes wrong-” he interrupts you- “we’ll stop and try again another time. Bucky, even if it doesn’t work, even if-- it’s me. Me and Natasha and Sam. You don’t got to be afraid. We would never- we would bring you back-you know that.”

You shake your head. “I’ve got no idea what they put in my brain, Steve, and you know I’m pretty much unstoppable. You and Natasha and Sam have tried before, and I hurt all of you real badly. You know you’ve got to do the right thing if things go sideways.”

“They won’t,” Steve says. “I promise.”

That’s as close as you’re going to get to acquiescence from him. “If something goes wrong,” you say again, “there’s a safe in the studio. It’s got a will in it. I’m not sure it’s legally binding, because technically I don’t exist, but it’s there. The land and animals go to Howard and Lisa, the money goes to Willow, and the house is yours.”

“Buck-” he whispers. 

You ignore him. “There’s also a note for T'Challa in there.” You know he would not let you pay him back for everything he’s done for you, and anyways there is no amount of money that would suffice. Instead you have written, I would have come because I love you, and it is the truth. 

As for Esihle, you have left nothing for her. The only thing you can give her is your own survival. 

“Ok, he says, sighing. “You want some coffee before we do this?” he asks.

Your stomach turns. It would be just one more thing to potentially vomit. “No,” you say, just as Sam starts down the stairs, “let’s do this.”

“Alright,” Sam says, one foot still raised in the air. He’s suited up, though you have no idea why he thinks his wings will be helpful in this particular situation. “We’re doing this. We’re doing this now. Can I have coffee first at least?”

“Yes,” you sigh. “Meet us in the creepy room when you’re finished.”

“The creepy room?” he asks.

You just point towards the direction of the attic and begin the climb up the stairs to your fate. 

“Oh, man,” Sam says as he enters the room, “this really is a creepy room. All it needs is a guy in a mask coming at me with a knife, and the serial killer aesthetic would be complete.” He brushes one your paper strips out of his face. 

“I am the guy in a mask,” you say, and you show him your teeth. 

“Sam. Buck,” Steve sighs, “come on.” 

“Yes, sir, Captain Tightpants, sir,” you say, but you take your place in the middle of the room, widening your stance, setting your shoulders. All your enemies are before you. It is time.

“Сильное желание” Natasha’s Russian is perfect, but it is Steve you are looking at. His jaw is set and his shield is raised. His lips are moving. You think he is praying.

“Проржавевший” 

You are-

You are standing in the pasture, the foliage in the distance brilliant against the pale autumn sky. Poppy blows a breath and shifts, tugging at her lead a little. For one sacred moment, she allows you to lean on her, all horse warm and alive. You close your eyes.

“Семнадцать”

You were born in 1917, at the tail of a war, and in the childhood of a new century. 

You are four. You are twenty five. You are seventeen. You are one hundred. 

Your mother takes your hand in the street. It is rough-worn and sweaty. Her skirt brushes against you as you walk.

“Рассвет” 

“Печь”

“Девять”

Willow takes your hand.

“Доброкачественная”

Your sister sticks your thumb into her mouth. You turn, sleep sweaty and wrap your small limbs around hers. 

“Возвращение домой”

The trenches are sodden with mud and so are you, shaking with exhaustion and cold as the night bears down. Dum Dum gets you laughing.

Your father says, “I see you’ve mended you shirt, son.” He fixes your collar and smoothes your shirt under his tobacco-stained hands. The church is cold, open and cavernous, but you are warm, close to him. 

“Один”

Pilot goes careening after the pine cone you whipped across the meadow with a pitcher’s accuracy. He brings it back covered in saliva and half-chewed. You wipe your hands on your pants, laughing. 

“James,” Esihle says.

“Грузовой автомобиль”

You are being unraveled, but you are stronger than the killer they have you made you. You have made yourself. 

It takes you to the floor, sweating, panting, your breath coming in great whuffs, like Poppy when you ride her too hard. 

“Buck?” Steve whispers. “Bucky?”

Your hands curl into the wood with the effort it is taking not to collapse. He is scared. Steve is so frightened. You need- you need to- “Steve. Stevie.” Your voice breaks and he is there on his knees in front of you. Cheek to cheek, your tears mingle as they fall. 

He lifts you up as easily as once you could have lifted him in Brooklyn in a different life neither of you had. He lifts you up and carries you in his arms down the stairs and into the room with the blue walls and the blue curtains and a bed you made for him with your very own hands. He lays you down on that very bed, lays himself down too. He puts his arms around you. He puts his body around you, weeping and hushing you at the same time. “It’s over now,” he says. “It’s over. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

You weep with him and he with you. You weep until you sleep. 

When you wake it is morning. You have slept a whole day and a night. He is standing in the light of the corner window, looking down at the new lilac bush. At some time during the night he must have removed your shoes and his as well, for he is barefoot and so are you. It seems to you the most unbearably intimate and tender thing he has ever done for you. 

The bed sheets rustle as you sit up and he turns. “Hey, how are you feeling?” his voice is rusty, filed to a rasp with weeping. 

You stretch each one of your arms and roll your neck. Your mind is miraculously clear. “Fine.”

He smiles. “Good.That’s real good to hear.”

“I gotta,” you swing your legs over the side of the bed in sudden panic, thinking you hear Poppy crying in hunger from the barn. “The animals-”

“Willow and Natasha took care of it,” Steve reassures you. “Willow came by yesterday afternoon, and this morning too. They even managed to deal with that demon of a horse of yours. She’s a real mean one, isn’t she?”

“I guess,” you concede. You’d like to stand up for Poppy, but there’s no getting around it. She’s mean.

“I think Willow’s still here.”

“She’s got school,” you mumble, rubbing at your eyes.

“I think she can skip one day of school,” Steve grins. “Don’t you?”

“I guess.” 

He doesn’t move from his spot by the window, but his eyes roam the room, taking in the armoire, the cream colored moldings, the wash basin, the bed. The bed: he’s studying the seams and corners, the whorls in the wood.

“That’s a real nice bed,” he says. “Did you make it?”

“Yeah. Yes,” you duck your head. “Esihle, she’s, uh, my therapist from Wakanda, she said it would be good to have something to do with my hands, so-”

“Wow. That’s really- that’s really quite something, Buck. You always were good with your hands.” You shrug. You suppose it’s true, you don’t have any evidence that it isn’t true. “Do you remember your father’s bed?”

It was dark wood, your father’s bed. Heavier and more ornate than the light wood and plain lines of the bed you have built. It was his pride and joy. He didn’t make it, he bought it, but it was the first thing he bought for your mother with his own money and it became a symbol of his ability to provide for his family. Even when, in the depths of the Depression, you had to downsize to a two bedroom apartment, all the kids crammed into one little room, that bed came with. You didn’t have much, but your father had luck, and still had a job, and he still had that bed. 

Yes, you remember that bed, you can’t remember his name, or any of their names, God help you, but you remember that bed.

“I don’t-” you lick your lips. “I remember the bed. But I can’t remember their names, Stevie. What were their names?”

You could have looked it up, it would have been so easy, but that felt like lying. You’ve got no right to them if you can’t remember them.

Steve blinks, and scrubs at his eyes. “George,” he whispers. “Your father’s name was George. Your mother’s name was Winifred, but everyone called her Freddie.”

“I had sisters, too, right?”

“Yes. Three younger sisters. Becca, Nell and little Kathleen- Kathy.”

You repeat their names under your breath. “Nell,” dark-haired, too tall, Nell, “and my Ma fought something awful,” you tell him. “I remember that.”

He smiles. “Oh yeah, like a couple of banshees. You used to come running to my place every time they started up.” You grin in reply. Silence falls between you. “You’re right,” he says finally, his eyes catching yours. “I do like this house.”

You would follow him anywhere. You would throw yourself into any fight, and make yourself into a weapon again for him. You would do it, but you don’t want to. You know that he cannot make himself turn away where there are people to be protected, and there are people you would die to protect yourself. You just wish there was another way to do the protecting. 

“I’m real tired, Buck,” he says. “I’m tired of fighting and I’m tired of missing you.” 

You close your eyes. When you open them he is still there. He is not an apparition. “You know you can always come home to me, Stevie,” you say. 

“I know,” he says. “I know.” 

He turns back to the window, looking out at your land, your apple trees, your pasture, your horses out grazing. You gaze at the sight of him, sunlight illuminating his precious face, burnishing the gold in his hair. You look down at your hands, black metal and flesh. 

“Two men could get married now, you know. To each other, I mean,” he says. 

“Why, Steve Rogers,” you say, “that’s awfully forward of you. You haven’t even taken me out on a date yet.”

The tips of his ears go bright red. “Bucky-”

You can’t help the grin on your face. “I ain’t no Netflix and chill boy, Rogers.”

“I don’t-” he is standing before you, hands hovering the air. “I don’t understand so much about this world,” he says, “but I understand-.” You lean into his touch, his broad hands framing your face, pushing a lock of your hair behind your ear. “May I?” he murmurs. 

“Yes,” you say, rising to him. “Yes,” you say, and he kisses you. 

You know what electricity feels like in the body. Love is not that. 

Love is once you and he went out to Rockaway, late summer, a stormy sky. You stood in the surf, two sixteen year olds, side by side. The water churned high, up to your shoulders, then in your eyes. The wave knocked you off your feet, salt stinging, lost in the murk and grit, you reached for his hand, legs scrambling to find purchase, to push yourself, to push him back to the surface. Then the wave passed over you and there you were, the two of you somehow standing, holding hands. 

Love is his mouth opening under yours, his body solid against your own. It is your hand moving through the short, soft hairs at the back of his neck, the way he groans a little when you pull at it. It is how he pants and says your name like a benediction, like absolution; the way you say his name in kind. 

Love is the scent of apple blossoms on the breeze. 

He pulls away and you chase after him, kissing him. He shakes his head. “We should stop.”

“Why?” you say, and you kiss him again. 

His fingers trace your lips, his pupils are blown wide. His stomach rumbles. “Because,” he says over your laughter. “I’m hungry and also,” he cocks his head, “I think Natasha is teaching Willow to play with knives in the kitchen.”

“Oh, Jesus,” you step back, pulling your t-shirt down and running a hand through your tangled hair. “We gotta go.” You slip your boots on.

“Easy,” Steve says. “It’s fine. Come on.” He takes your hand and you walk downstairs together. 

The scent of frying bacon hits you when you enter the kitchen. Wilson raises a spatula in greeting from where he is manning the stove. Indeed Natasha is teaching Willow to hide a kitchen knife up her sleeve at the table.

“James,” Willow complains when she sees you, knife clattering out of her sleeve and onto the table. “Why didn’t you ever teach me to do this?”

“Because I don’t want you to get arrested at school,” you grumble, reaching to pour yourself some coffee. 

Natasha snorts. “She’s going to be so good at this, she’ll never get caught.”

Steve laughs behind you, his hand skimming down your arm as he passes, loading his plate with french toast and bacon. You blush, but settle yourself down with some food as well. 

All of you are gathered at the table. Willow kicks at your legs. You wonder if Mare has talked to her yet. She grins around a mouthful of food. “Told you so,” she whispers.

The wave has washed over you and here you are.


	7. IV. Home

It’s a hot summer night. The kitchen window is open to the breeze and the sound of the kids terrorizing the chickens back into their coops. There’s baseball on the radio- a Cubs game, because Steve won’t acknowledge the existence of the LA Dodgers, and you won’t acknowledge the continued existence of the Yankees. Lester’s on the mound. The Cubs are up 2-1 in the 6th, with 2 out, but the tying run is on first and everyone knows Lester won’t throw to first. Full count. 

Steve’s wiping the dishes as you wash them. It’s a chore the kids should be doing, but you don’t quite have the heart to call them in. You’re smiling, you realize. Smiling and crying, somehow. 

“Bucky?” Steve asks, concerned. 

Lester strikes out the side.

“The kids are going to put the chickens off their eggs,” you reply.

“You’re crying about the eggs?” Steves says, even though you both know you are not crying about the eggs. “You know, nowadays we have these things called supermarkets. We can pick up eggs any time you’d like.” 

You laugh. “Rogers-”

But Steve isn’t having it. “Come on,” he says, “what’s going on?”

These days you wake in the night, feet on a woven rug, hand reaching for a weapon that isn’t there, Pilot keening softly as he leans against your legs. You turn and see the line of your husband’s back. You would know it anywhere-in any body, in any reality, in any nightmare waking into a dream. He breathes soft and easy in sleep. 

You slip your bare feet into your boots and start your circuit. The boys, Taylor, and Lisa’s grandson Shawn, visiting from South Carolina and Chicago, respectively, are asleep, limbs sprawled, half laying one on top of the other. The window in their room is locked. Willow sits up when you pad into her room to check her window. She blinks and then slides back down under the covers and into sleep. 

Pilot trots after you out the back door, past Steve’s garden, verdant and wet with dew, and your dozing chickens. Poppy’s mellowed some after all these years. She nickers as you enter the barn in greeting and you run your hand down her neck, watching the moonlight reflect off the chrome of Steve’s bike in what used to be Mungbean’s stall. 

Steve’s awake when you get back, sitting up in bed and holding out an old hooded sweatshirt and a pair of socks.

“Cold?” he asks, because now you know- you both know- that sometimes it takes nothing more than a creeping chill to drive you into a panicked waking. 

You take the clothes from him without answering, and when you’ve pulled on the body-warm sweatshirt and the soft socks, you slip back into bed, and into his embrace. You kiss his bare shoulder and he presses his lips to the metal of your palm. His arm comes around you. You will not sleep again tonight, but this is enough. 

Some days his love is a comfort and some days it feels like absolution, but he has never, not once, believed in your guilt, so you must be your own absolution and that is a hard, hard thing. This is enough.

Now, in the kitchen, he places the dishrag down on the counter. “Buck?” he says again.

You turn him so he is facing you, so he is so, so close. You trace his cheekbones with your thumbs. “I love you,” you say. 

“Well,” he grins, “you married me, so I sort of took that at as a given.” 

He comes easy into your arms. “Did you ever think we would have this?” you ask him. 

“No,” he answers, “never. I couldn’t even have imagined this. Not in a million years. It’s like a miracle.”

Outside, the apples are ripening on the trees. There are children running barefoot across the grass, chasing chickens and fireflies. Their laughter comes to you as if from another century. Once you laughed like that. Once you felt happiness unburdened by pain. 

Once and now.

And now.

Some little animal inside of you opens its eyes and lives.


End file.
